


Fairy Tales and Frozen Hearts

by AceofHarts



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Canon-Typical Violence, I'll update character tags if some become more major, M/M, POV Third Person, but it's not, changed the summary since I know where it's going now yay, only tagging that because it'll look like first person at the start
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-23 04:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2533652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceofHarts/pseuds/AceofHarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin is the cursed king of a cold fairy-tale kingdom. Eren—Armin's childhood friend and now his knight—is bound and determined that Armin's story is going to get a happily ever after, no matter what role he has to play to make that happen.<br/>Some dragons, some violence, some fluff, some angst, and a lot of eremin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_So—so there was this prince. Once. Of this tiny little kingdom. Just a little kid with little hands and this shiny gold halo for hair. And he had big round eyes that went glossy anytime he looked out his tower window or talked about what he thought was outside of it. And he did talk about it, because—because he had friends, right? He wasn’t locked up in there alone. He had friends, and me and Mikasa were really close with him. We spent all their time together, we played together, and told each other stories and fell down the stairs and got into trouble—that’s what friends are, isn’t it?_

_And we were in the court, sort of. Just from a minor family though._

_And he couldn’t stay a prince forever because that’s never how it goes, that’s not the point of a prince if he’s the **only** one, and he was. And one day his parents left the palace grounds and they didn’t come back, not ever. They’d crossed paths with a dragon, before they were everywhere, and it killed them and it cursed their whole line, and… And the prince was too young to rule and his grandfather was too **old** to rule so he became regent and…the country moved on. And out. They couldn’t stay in a cursed kingdom, so they had to move on. That’s what the prince told us; we all had to go. And me and Mikasa moved on, too, because the prince was too busy now trying to find some way to break a dragon curse, and it wasn’t safe to be around him._

_So the prince stayed in his castle, and we went outside the palace walls. Only, I didn’t want to be outside—that was my best friend sitting on a throne that was too big for him, and I wanted to be with him. To look after him. Because the prince needed looking after. He always fell off the bannister when they were trying to slide down it, and—_

_No, I know, that’s not the point. That’s not the story. Fine._

_So I decided that I'd become a knight, since it was only the knights who got to stay with the prince—they got to stay in the kingdom to help fight. But to become a knight you have to be a squire, first. So we went out looking for people who needed squires, but nobody wanted a couple of brats from some no-name household in some cursed kingdom. We even started small, asking the more local households, so that we wouldn’t seem arrogant. Eventually we had to start aiming higher, and higher, until eventually we came to the greatest (scariest,_ _most intimidating_ _) knight in the whole court. He was never stationed at the palace, so neither were we, but we got to learn to fight._

_Then the regent died. And everyone in the kingdom cried for him—everyone, right down to some measly nothing squire—and we all thought, ‘How is the prince holding up? Is he going to be alright?’ Only when the prince appeared again he wasn’t the prince anymore. He was the king._

_Rumours started to spread about the king, and how he was—cold. Ruthless. Heartless, even. And we didn’t believe it! We knew better than that—we knew our prince was this sweet kid, this genuine, loving kid, and that you wouldn’t ever be like what the people were saying. You couldn’t be._

_But then we won. Not against the dragons. Not yet—even though we did fight them a lot. But we trained, and we fought, and in the end we were called to court to be knighted, and…_

            Eren finally lifted his eyes from the blazingly blue carpet on which he’d been kneeling. He’d been staring at it for so long that when he looked at Armin, a network of vague scarlet afterimages was wreathed around and over him, separating kneeling knight from enthroned king.

            Even through the crimson, Eren could make out the flat, unmodulated frigidity of Armin’s expression, the harder lines of his face, the paler cast to his skin. Eren had seen frozen streams with more warmth in them than Armin’s eyes.

            He should have known. To be brought before your best friend, to smile and step forward and have your exclamation about how much you’ve missed him interrupted by a clipped command to kneel—to, upon being knighted and trying to rise, have the words again start falling from your lips only to be told that what he said in court should be said to the _whole_ court—that was to know. The rumours were true. The prince was dead; long live the king.

            “Their placement, your majesty?”

            Eren let himself look at the speaker: a tall man, square-jawed and unreadable, standing just beside the throne. Erwin was his name. Levi spoke of him often, and highly. Erwin spent a great deal of time out in the wilderness where Mikasa and Eren had been off hunting for dragons, but Eren had never been in his presence for so long before. He was one of the king’s closest advisors. 

            Armin blinked. It was just half a second with his eyes closed, but in that half-second, with those changed eyes hidden, Eren could pretend that this was still his friend.

            “Mikasa in the personal guard,” the king said, "stationed by the throne. Eren to the sixth tower of the gates.”

            “Th—the gates—?!”, Eren said, nearly launching to his feet. It was the furthest position imaginable from the throne for a knight inducted to the high court—it was where the rejects, the pity promotions, the incompetent but politically expedient cousins were sent.

            Mikasa was kneeling next to him, having just been knighted herself. She tilted her head just enough in his direction that he stopped himself from doing anything rash.

 

            For the moment, anyway. As soon as they were out of the throne room and away from the stifled snickers of the courtiers who'd come to watch, Eren said, “What the hell is going on?!”, at a less than cautious volume.

            Levi was leading him and Mikasa down a narrower corridor. Mikasa trailed her fingers along the rough stones. It was the first time they’d been home since they’d been children. Every stone and hall and hiding place was familiar to them after a childhood spent tearing through the place at top speed, often hiding from Armin’s guards or from each other. There were more cracks in the walls now than there used to be, and scorch marks splayed across the defenses. The kingdom had not been so rife with firebreathers when Eren had been a child, and they certainly had not been this antagonistic.

            “We came here to get your assignments,” Levi said. “We got them. I’m not sure why you’re having a tantrum about it.”

            “He put me as far from him as possible without actually launching me out of the castle with a fucking catapult! He’s my best friend—he isn’t supposed to be like this!”

            “He has a curse to lift, Jaeger, and you have a post to maintain. There’s no room for friends in this. Report to me tonight before you go out to the gates, and I'll give you the basics of how this goes. Oh, and dress warm if you like your fingers.”

            He turned into a branching hallway that would lead him to his quarters. Eren and Mikasa continued on straight until the mess hall opened out before them. It was smoky and dim and discouragingly quiet. There was a stack of bowls and spoons laid out on the counter, a large pot of stew bubbling over the fireplace, and one lonely cluster of people in the far corner with their heads bent over their food. Most of the broad, scrubbed tables were bare. Eren and the other two had snuck into this room often in earlier years, as far as three children could really sneak into a room full of trained knights. There’d always been bread to spare then, and there’d always been friendly (if scarred-up) faces willing to entertain them with a story or two.

            Most of those knights were buried now.

            Eren and Mikasa got their stew and were fully prepared to eat with only each other for company. The other knights present seemed to form a closed circle. There was no point intruding, especially after that resounding humiliation in the court.

            Then one of the others spotted them and lifted halfway from his bench.

            “Hey, shithead! And Mikasa.” The weak, rather embarrassed follow-up identified the speaker even before Eren recognized the voice. The speaker abandoned his place at the table, strode over to Eren, and pushed him back half a step. “The hell are you doing here?”, Jean demanded.

            “I could ask you the same thing,” Eren said, salvaging his balance before he spilled his stew. “You here sucking up, looking for shelter? Because you went exactly the wrong direction for that. The further you get from this place, the better your odds of surviving.”

            “So of course this is exactly where you turn up,” Jean said. He snatched the stew from Eren’s hands. “C’mon. You sit with us.” He looked at Mikasa. “You—um. You sit wherever you want, obviously. But also obviously we’d _like_ you to sit with us. And.” He winced and returned to his seat. He elbowed one of his peers until he shuffled along the bench far enough to make room for Eren and Mikasa. 

            As Eren settled onto the bench between Jean and Mikasa, the conversation turned to where they’d all been stationed most recently, how much action they’d seen, and on along all the familiar conversational paths. Eren even started to feel a little better, despite that the stew was so much thick grey mush and despite that other than Jean’s, he knew none of these faces.

            “How long’ve you been here, anyway?”, Eren asked. “We hadn’t seen you in so long we thought you were charred on some field out there somewhere.” He waved vaguely with his spoon.

            “I don’t know—it’s been on and off for a few years,” Jean said. “This time it’s just been a few months so far, but I’ve got a permanent position now, so I guess I’m staying.”

            “A few _years?_ ”, Mikasa asked. Both she and Eren were staring at their fellow. They had been scrambling to get back to the castle since virtually the moment they’d set foot outside it, but Levi had never been called back. He’d been assigned to seeking out dragon nests, in search of the one responsible for killing the king's parents. Armin had needed his best fighter out there fighting, not playing defend-the-castle.

            “Yeah,” Jean said. “Not that I was on knight duty the whole time—I only got knighted, what, this time last year? Why do you two look so surprised, anyway? You squire for Erwin, you spend as much running around with a dragon scorching your ass in the castle as out in the middle of nowhere. Neither's really all that fun.”

            “There’ve been a lot here, right?”, Eren asked.

            “Fucking tons of them,” Jean said with a nod. The bantering tone had left his voice. “It’s been ridiculous, especially lately. Every couple of weeks we get hit. Sometimes it’s just one or two of the little ones, but sometimes it’s…”

            “What are the casualties like?”, Mikasa asked. Jean shook his head.

            “Depends on the size of the lizard, and on how good the defense strategy is that particular month. They’re always trying new things. They work well enough that we're not all digested by now, anyway.”

            “Where’d he end up stationing you?”, Eren asked. He would kill for some good company out on those walls. Jean was competent enough that he shouldn’t have been out there, but Eren figured that if Armin could put _him_ of all people there, he could do it to anyone.

            The corners of Jean’s mouth sagged.

            “The tower,” he said.

            “What’s so bad about that?”

            “Oh, just the fact that it’s the centre of all the action.” Eren and Mikasa frowned in unison.

            “Why?”, she asked.

            “Well he’s got this ridiculous idea in his head that it’s cleaner, or something, if he’s sort of—up above most of the castle when they attack, so that we don’t have two-hundred-foot dragons breaking through the roof of the throne room, I guess. I mean it makes _some_ sense? I can’t say I really like him sitting up there by himself though—”

            “Stop,” Eren said, “ _stop_ , you’re saying—they go for Armin specifically?”

            Jean stopped with a spoonful of stew halfway to his mouth.

            “You didn’t know? The court mage's been looking into it for years, and that’s still one of the only bits of the curse we knew for sure. They fly straight for him when they turn up.”

            “And you put him up in the tower by himself!?”

            The spoon plinked back into the bowl as Jean tossed his hands up in the air.

            “Were you not listening? It’s _him—_ it’s where he wants to be. He gets absolutely vicious when you try to take that from him, too—”

            “Shut the fuck up!”, Eren snapped, shooting from the bench. “What’d you know about it?!”

            “Probably more than the guy who just spent more than half the last decade riding around in the countryside,” Jean said. “I’ve been here often enough, alright? I’m not insulting him. I’m just—”

            “Going on about things you know nothing about! How about you fucking _don’t!?_ ” He stormed out, leaving his dinner barely touched. Mikasa rose halfway as if to follow him, but he slammed the mess hall door shut behind him.

            “Touchier than I remember,” Jean muttered.

            “Did you hear where he got assigned?”, Mikasa asked.

            “Nah. Food takes priority over dubbing ceremonies. I would’ve gone if I’d known it was the two of you, though.”

            “He’s starting at the gates.”

            Jean’s breath hissed out between his teeth.

            “Ouch. That's...a bit of a distance to throw in there. Y’know, the way you two talked about Armin, I always sort of figured you’d parted on pretty good terms.”

            “We did.” Mikasa glanced again towards the door. Then she picked up her bowl of stew in one hand, Eren’s in the other, and followed him. She found Eren in the first place she looked. He was stomping around one of the broad halls of the upper castle. The wind snaked into it now through the holes torn in the roof, but the room was still recognizable. It had smooth, colourful, patterned stone floors—now pitted with debris and blasted black in sections—that they’d used as the playing field for any number of made-up games. Armin had ‘held court’ here for the first time, with his lords and ladies consisting of Eren, Mikasa, and a few of the other children from the castle. Class distinction hadn’t been of any real importance in Armin’s childhood court. Really, that remained the case now, as Jean’s newfound knighthood proved; he was the son of the stablemaster from the next town over, with no noble blood whatsoever. Climbing the social ladder became a lot easier when the top rungs kept getting bitten off.

            “Eren,” Mikasa said, without stepping far into the space. “You should eat.”

            “No!” That was as much of an argument as he presented. She stepped forward onto a red square of tile.

            “You’ll get sick.”

            “I’ll get eaten! What does it matter!?”

            “It does matter.”

            “If I’ve got to be roasted I’d like to do it on an empty stomach, thanks—seems like the best way to spite them, now. Only real way I can, if he's not going to let me fight properly...”

            Mikasa moved forward again, this time onto a pale yellow square. It had been part of one of their old games. ‘Capture the Prince,’ they’d called it. You had to move only onto certain colours, only at certain times, and Armin had been the one making the decisions. He’d always been the one standing facing the far wall, trying to remember the layout of the floor’s pattern and give orders such that the others couldn’t progress near enough to touch him.

            He’d always let them win, in the end.

 

            Through sheer persistence and unwillingness to leave, Mikasa did eventually convince Eren. Even with food in his stomach, he was perfectly cranky once it came time to take his assigned station. Later that evening Mikasa was checking over the buckles of his pauldrons. They had to be fully kitted out and prepared for an attack any moment they were on duty, and most moments they weren't. Having such complicated armour of their own was still relatively new to them, and Mikasa was fastidious about checking Eren’s over.

            “If you do it wrong, you could die,” she said when he complained about how long it was taking.

            “Well maybe it wouldn’t be such a problem if I wasn’t put out for dragonbait.”

            “We both know that’s not the part that bothers you.”

            Eren’s face burned. He hadn’t felt so much like a child since before the dragon attacks had started. Mikasa finished her inspection in silence and nudged him towards the door. Eren went out to his station without another word.

            The night sky was inky by the time he climbed up onto the rampart near the sixth tower. Yellow torchlight punctuated the darkness along the top of the wall every few dozen metres, but the castle was for the most part just a hulking, formless mass in the night.

            It wasn’t so dark that when Eren sighed upon seeing his new post, he couldn’t see his breath in the air. He was allotted a lit torch, a small wooden stool, two spears, a box of ammunition, and—actually, that ballista didn’t look quite right. It was a large machine like he remembered, all tensed wood and rope, but something about the overall shape was wrong.

            “What’s going on with this?”, he asked his fellow guard—a young woman with her hair brown hair drawn back. She was leaning on the parapet and looking as if she wished she were asleep. She was about Eren's age, somewhere in the neighbourhood of nineteen years old. 

            “With what?”, she asked, once he saw that the asker was unfamiliar, and therefore someone with no higher rank than her own. Eren kicked at the base of the wooden contraption he was, apparently, to man. The whole machine creaked strangely, and now that he looked, it wasn’t even pushed up against the parapet as the ballistas he remembered had been.

            “These. Did they get redesigned?” The watchwoman shrugged a little.

            “This is my first turn in the castle,” she said. “I’ve only been here a few weeks; I'm not the person to ask.”

            “Well what am I supposed to do with it?”

            She pointed towards the tower. It was just barely visible against the night sky, and mainly because one tiny rectangle near the top of it was lit up gold.

            “Protect the tower.”  That explained the difference in shape. The ballista wasn’t designed to fire specifically in one direction, but rather could rotate on its base.  “Is this your station? Sorry, you’re—Eren, right?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Our main job here’s to get them when they go after the tower. I'm told we're not too good at stopping them on the approach, so we get them mostly once they're in. You just aim and shoot. It’s simple. Scouts haven’t given us a reason to expect an attack tonight, so…” She was not actually edging towards the steps that would take her down to the courtyard, but somehow even with her feet planted most of her body mass seemed to be shifting that way.

            “Yeah, yeah, go on,” Eren said. He hoped to hell someone was going to show him how to use the siege weapon at some point, because would not have the vaguest idea. He wasn’t even sure who his immediate superior officer was. He’d expected to be placed more or less right next to the throne; he’d _expected_ to take his orders directly from the king. “Just—what’s your name?”

            “Sasha,” she said. "We'll have some shifts together probably once they say an attack's more likely. Until then..." She hurried towards the steps, rubbing her arms the whole while. 

            Once he was alone Eren’s eyes strayed immediately to the tower, to that small splinter of light. Armin must have still been awake up there, and Eren wished he had some idea of what he was doing. 

            He leaned over the crenellations, peering through the darkness in search of a wing or a spiny tail. Even though he’d be absolutely lost when it came to firing the ballista, he hoped a dragon attacked. He had his sword on his hip, after all, and the spears leaning close by. If he got to heroically save the castle, maybe Armin would listen to him. Maybe in all the panic Armin would retreat to his tower, straight up to the attic room where no one would think to look for him, and when the beast smelled him in there and set its claws into the stone—Eren would know. He’d know the king was in danger. He’d go dashing up the steps of the tower, pushing his way up through crumbled masonry and scorched timbers. He’d force the fangs and the claws and the horns away from the motionless form of his best friend. Then when the dragon was nothing but a ragged, hulking corpse, Eren would kneel beside Armin, lift his shoulders gently from the floor, brush that soft gold-spun hair from in front of his face and look into a pair of eyes that were clear and warm and familiar again and—and—

            _Wait a second where is this going_ —

            “That’s selfish.” Eren did his best not to yelp as he spun around. The stare that met him was unmistakable both in its flat exasperation and its actual features.

            “Mikasa! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

            “You’re looking for a dragon, aren’t you? If we’re attacked it will be me who has to save Armin, so don’t hope for that.”

            Eren huffed noisily and leaned back against the stone.

            “Didn’t Levi say you were starting early tomorrow? You should go to sleep. I’ve got things under control here.” Her gaze immediately went to the ballista. “Alright, not that exact part of it—but the signalling bit’s fine.” He indicated the torch in its bracket. Levi had gone over the very basics of the post with him before sending him out to relieve Sasha. If he spotted anything, he was to take that torch and light the fuel in the nearby tower to alert the rest of the castle. The whole circumference of the wall was studded with towers and with ballistas. All were manned at every hour of the day and night, so in theory they should have plenty of warning if they were going to be attacked. 

            The way Mikasa looked at him told him this wasn’t enough.

            “If you see anything, light your signal and then hide,” she said. Eren set his jaw.

            “ _N_ _o_. If I see a dragon I’m going to put a spear through its eye.” Mikasa tried to respond, but Eren talked over her. “I’ll kill it, hand to hand, without _this_ —”, he kicked the ballista, harder this time, “and he’ll have to promote me out of here!”

            Mikasa's expression didn't change. She was only in soft civilian clothes, but there was no real doubt that she would be able to beat the armed, armoured Eren if it came down to wrestling for victory.

            “On our way here,” she said, “you said it didn’t matter where he put you. It wasn’t just about Armin—it still shouldn’t be. This is our kingdom too. It’s our _home_ —”

            “Not if Armin’s not in it!”

            Mikasa’s hands clenched with the effort of not shouting straight back.

            “Armin is still in it.”  

            “But he’s different. He is— _Mikasa_ , he’s not right—”

            All Mikasa had to do to interrupt him was blink.

            “Why do you get to decide that for him? And for the rest of us?”

            “Because he gets to decide everything for the rest of us, so if he’s not right none of us can be! I always said Armin would be a great king, didn’t I? But I meant _Armin,_ not—this. Something happened, right? Something with the curse. I bet you it’s what’s doing this to him. It emptied him out, or turned him to stone, or—come on, how many curses have we seen? You know what they can do to people!”

            Their work with hunting down dragons’ nests had carried them often into the neighbouring kingdoms, and yes, there had been dozens of curses to contend with there too. The whole continent was littered with tragic orphans and cursed monarchs and court intrigues. Mikasa had hoped this experience would lessen the impact on Eren when they returned to their home, not exacerbate it.

            “But we don’t know what it’s done to Armin specifically,” Mikasa said. “They’re all different. Don’t just assume things like this about people.”

            “Mikasa, his entirely personality changed—”

            “You’ve seen him once. He was in court, and you were babbling about your personal connection with him, and he had to distance himself from that when he was in front of all of those emissaries. Yes he stationed you at the walls, but do you really think that now, with dragons after the castle all the time, this position is as unimportant as it used to be? To _Armin_ , Eren? He's smarter than to put people he doesn't have faith in in charge of his largest weapons. This is a critical point of defense, and he put you here. If he'd really wanted to slight you you'd be guarding the kitchens. He’ll talk to you outside of the throne room and you’ll feel better.”

            Eren believed her. He spent the rest of his night out there on the walls expecting, on some level, that Armin would pop out to visit him with a plate full of food to share and an apology. Eren had just decided that he would forgive him unconditionally when footsteps rang out along parapet. Eren spun around, ready to finally really talk to his king, but found himself looking at someone he'd never met.

            “Your shift’s done,” the newcomer said. "You should get some sleep." 

            Eren hadn’t realized he’d been smiling until he felt the expression die.

            “Right,” he said. “Thanks.”

            Eren had been getting used hauling armour around for much of his life, first Levi's and then his own. But when he dumped himself into his assigned bed wearing just his thin leggings and a light shirt, he thought he hadn’t felt so heavy in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This vague idea was what started me on wanting to write fic in general, so the loose outline predates all my other fic, but until yesterday it was just a few bits and pieces. Comments are welcome, as always!
> 
> Oh and also I deleted the first part of this note because now I do in fact know where this is going AND how it is getting there, so it was no longer really relevant. Progress!


	2. Chapter 2

             It was a week before Armin decided it was time to go. He spent his days fidgeting on the throne more than he had since he’d been a squirmy nine year old. He spent his nights researching and planning and glancing out his window at the sixth guardtower _far_ too often. It was a distraction, and he couldn’t afford those. This had to end, one way or another. 

            A brief discussion with Hannes, the commanding officer of the castle's defences, had confirmed what Armin had suspected. Eren had been shunted to the overnight shift. Armin had made an comment to this effect before Levi’s unit had ever arrived back at the castle, and Hannes had followed through.

            Armin was part thankful and part regretful for it. He'd only ever said it in the first place as idle speculation, not as a real order to put into practice. Even that speculation had only been produced out of momentary optimism when he'd heard that Mikasa and Eren were not only coming back, but also intending to stay. He’d been thinking, if Eren was stationed at the walls and worked nights, it would be easy to talk to him privately. If he spent all day standing around by the throne under the scrutiny of the court, it would be difficult to get a meaningful word in edgewise, and most of the other accessible positions around the castle were already filled. One of the guards near the sixth tower had recently met an early end when he'd been batted over the walls by a dragon's wing, so there had even been an opening. 

            But it couldn't last. It would wear Eren down, first through the lack of sleep while he adjusted to a new schedule, and then through the inevitable disconnect with Mikasa when they never saw each other. The shift should have stayed with someone who was used to it, not been giving to a first-timer. Eren had never used a ballista before, and Armin didn’t expect it would be much easier if he was learning in the dark.

            It was Armin's fault, and he'd take responsibility for fixing it. First, however, he would take advantage of the situation while it lasted.

            Armin stood before the round, rather warped mirror in his small  bedroom near the top of the castle's high tower, and he tried his best. He dug the tangles out of his hair where the crown had rested all that long day in court, and then he tied it back in a half-ponytail so it would stay out of his face. He pulled on a jacket, and then drew a cloak over his shoulders. As he smoothed the cloak down, he examined his reflection. He was almost totally covered, and even his face had a cold, hard look to it. That was how it needed to be, for the moment, while he fought with the frantic thump of his pulse. The king could not go tearing around the castle looking like a startled rabbit. People would think something was wrong.

            He would have to try not to use the same expression on Eren. He hadn’t _meant_ to in the throne room, but then he hadn’t really _meant_ for Eren to try to dismantle Armin’s entire political situation within two minutes of his return. The expression was just a defense mechanism, and Eren had sprung it with incredible ease. Waxing poetic about the value of friendship and the rumours about Armin’s corrupted nature was just about the opposite of what Armin had needed from Eren, at that moment. The personal bafflement would have frozen Armin’s face solid all on its own, but there’d also been the very real danger posed by the visiting emissaries. In all his travels in and beyond the kingdom, Eren had apparently never picked up the ability to take a hint. A basic ‘please kneel’ and the tacit ‘Eren, gods, shut _up_ I need to get you out of here as soon as I can,’ had only seemed to signal to Eren: ‘Yes, please stress your personal attachment to me and view that I’ve become an Evil King. I would appreciate this on both a personal and professional level.’

            Armin would have shut himself in the tower for a day or two to sleep off the absurdity of it all, but that only would have underlined the personal connection, as far as the emissaries were concerned. The last thing Armin needed right now was reports going out to all the neighbouring kingdoms that the king’s tragic long-lost friend had returned and was showing every sign of trying to become the Knight. It was a complication, and it would get Eren killed, and it was all just so impossible already. He'd buried himself in research and negotiations, both to keep himself busy and to keep everyone certain that he was unaffected by and indifferent to Eren's return. If that hadn't been an issue he would have been out at the walls that very first night. 

            Satisfied that he looked suitably stern, Armin left his room and started down the long, spiralling staircase that led to the base of the tower. So late at night the thin slits of windows offered no real light to navigate by, but Armin trusted himself here. The steps were stone, and remarkably solid given the beatings this tower had taken over the years. It had been a long, long time since he’d made a misstep.  

            The heavy door that marked the exit didn't make a sound when he opened it; he made sure to keep it oiled. Of course, that couldn't prevent the inevitable. 

            “Where are you going?”, Jean asked, as he always asked, the moment Armin stepped outside. He wasn’t always the guard stationed at this exit from the tower—he needed his rest just like anyone—but he was the only one who made a point of asking.

            “Just for a walk,” Armin said.

            “Just for a walk out the front gates, never to return?”

            “Not yet.”

            Jean snorted and leaned back against the wall.

            “Well, let me know.”

            “I…will probably not do that.”

            “You’re going to need a dragon-puncher, if you ever go.” Armin frowned at him, and Jean shrugged. “I’m not getting any lofty ideas, don't worry. I'm just saying, I wouldn’t mind getting out of the castle. Might be a nice break.”

            "Breaks really shouldn't end with getting eaten. You should get inside for now. There’s no point guarding an empty tower.”

            “Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I’m asleep on the stairs when you get back just give me a kick.”

            Armin waited until Jean retreated into the stairwell before he set off again. The tower’s main entrance opened out into one of the castle’s main halls, and so the main entrance was not the one he had taken. There was no reason to let any watchful visiting nobles see him sneaking about after dark. The entrance he used most, and the one at which he’d deliberately stationed a guard he could trust, let out into a dark and narrow space—a servants’ exterior corridor. It was the most basic of the alternative paths Armin used to get around his castle, but among the most important. He didn’t know what he would have done, these past few years, if he hadn’t been able to get out of that tower when he needed to.

             He'd been doing this for years, and there'd always been that slight risk that he'd bump right into a scale-covered snout that was just _delighted_ to meet him. For some reason, though, he'd never been as nervous about meeting a fire-breathing monster as he was tonight on his way to meet his best friend. 

 

            The eighth night after Eren returned to the castle, he finally got the visitor he’d been hoping for. One moment he was alone up there on the castle’s exterior wall, looking to see if he could make out the distant mountains so long after sunset. The next, he could feel someone out there with him.

            Armin was standing a little ways off, almost out of the torchlight, as if he'd just materialized there. He looked much the same as he had in the throne room, with a silken cloak clasped at the throat which obscured his entire form, and with his eyes inscrutable and undemonstrative. He looked like a king; he looked like a perfect stranger. 

            “Hey,” Eren said, because he could think of nothing better, and certainly nothing to articulate what he really wanted to say. Armin shifted his head slightly in what might have been an acknowledging nod. He cleared his throat as if to say something, but didn’t for a few seconds.

            “What did you actually come here for?”

            It was not what Eren had expected to hear, and certainly not what Eren had _wanted_ to hear. He’d wanted some reconciliation, some _explanation_ , not the same embarrassment from the throne room played out a second time. Honestly, he felt it had been thoroughgoing enough the first time.  

            He glowered at the rough stone of the rampart so that he wouldn't have to look at the wall of kingly reserve before him. He wanted to try not to be angry with Armin.

            “To help fight dragons,” he said.

            “You’ve been fighting plenty of dragons out there.” Armin glanced over the wall. “You’ve _been_ helping. So why come back here?”

            So much for not getting angry. 

            “I don’t know what you’re accusing me of. There wasn’t a motive—me and Mikasa just came back to help, the kingdom in general but also _you specifically_. Did you think I was lying, in the court? I only ever went out there because of you in the first place. We left so we could come back and be able to actually _help_ you, Armin—”

            “Well I’m sorry!”       

            By the time Eren looked up, Armin's cloak cloak was falling still. Whatever gesture he’d made or action he’d taken, Eren didn’t get to know. 

            “What?”, Eren said. 

            Armin was glaring away over the wall now, with his eyes winched almost shut from the bottom up. It was the same face he’d made in the past anytime he’d been summoning up his full royal wrath for some childish debate. “What’re you sorry for? Leaving was the best thing I’ve ever done—I’ve seen all the things you used to tell me about! I’ve seen forests with trees taller than your tower—fields bigger than your whole kingdom—I’ve seen the _ocean_ , Armin!” He pushed a hand through his hair. “And the dragons, the ones out in the wild—they’re more beautiful than you ever would have thought, out in the sunlight, or over the water— _Armin_ —”

            While Eren’s line of sight had been obscured, Armin had been moving towards the steps. Eren reached out for what he’d thought was the king’s arm, but he got only a fistful of smooth satin cloak. He didn't let go of it. 

            “Where are you going?”, Eren snapped. “Why did you even bother to come out here if you’re just going to ignore me and run away?! You never were a coward, so _what—_ you're just going because you're angry with me? Because you figure it'll hurt more if you just stomp off without explaining anything? I don’t get what I did to piss you off so much, or what happened to you at—at all…”

            Eren's feeling that Armin had somehow been transmuted to some cold mountain creek turned out to be more accurate than he’d wanted. Even in the dimness of the battlements, even with Armin turned only slightly toward him, he could tell. “What are you crying for? I—didn’t mean to…?” He tried to say something else—he had no idea what, since right now he had nothing in his mind but buzzing and a distant clanking sound—but no sound came out. In all their years falling down stairs and getting shouted at by courtiers and waging pretend wars, he had never personally made Armin cry. Not even when they’d argued. Armin had never cried much, and when he had it had always been Eren and Mikasa who had tried to wipe the tears from his face and, when they’d gotten a bit older, to prevent them from falling in the first place.

            When he realized that neither of them was going to give up a word or two to explain this mess, Eren tugged Armin over, folded one arm around his waist, and buried his nose in the king’s hair. It was softer than he’d expected; he found his fingers straying up to tangle in it and smooth it down, tangle in it and smooth it down, methodically, slowly. 

            It was only an instinct, but it had been a good one. Armin didn’t shove him back or lift his voice to some imperious register to ask who Eren thought he was applying his filthy warrior-class hands to. Armin didn’t do anything at all other than lean against Eren. He was all tension and frustrated, teeth-gritted silence. He didn’t even let himself sob properly. The occasional drop landing on Eren's neck and sliding down beneath his shoulder guards was the only proof he was crying at all. It would have been more comprehensible to Eren, more bearable really, if Armin had been making some sort of huge, wailing racket. That was how he’d cried as a little boy, right up until—

            Right up until the messenger had come with the news about Armin’s parents. He was shaking now as he had then, but his frame was thinner, not rounded out and childish. Thinner than that shimmering layer of satin would show.

            Eren wanted to ask him again why he was crying, and he _especially_ wanted to ask him whether he was alright, in the broader sense. He didn’t get the chance. Both of them heard it. They’d each spent too long listening for that precise sound of battered air not to know exactly what it was. Eren tried to twitch back away from Armin so that he could draw his sword or pick up one of the spears, but Armin said, “Wait.” There was more steel in his voice than Eren would have expected, given that he’d just been crying. When Armin looked directly up, past Eren, the latter saw that the king's eyes were still watery and red, but also absolutely unwavering as they followed the dragon high up above.

            Waiting in this situation would have been a challenge for Eren, under normal circumstances. Six years of training and countless dead and wounded friends and allies, along with every instinct and bundle of nerves in his body, was trying to send him springing into attack.

            He didn’t so much as twitch. He didn’t even look up. Though his ears were straining to catch the wingbeats—more difficult now given the way his heart was pounding—and though the spears were nearly within arm’s reach, Eren stayed perfectly still. He watched Armin while Armin watched the dragon. The dull thud of the wingbeats stopped. It was just a matter of seconds now—the beast was diving, and Armin wasn’t moving but he’d said to wait—

            Eren’s whole field of vision flickered and turned to a brilliant pale gold. The bulky shape of the castle, the night sky, even the rampart on which they stood, all disappeared. The whole world seemed to consist of Eren and Armin—and the immediate crunching thud from a foot or two above their heads. Their attacker gave a shrill screech, which trailed away as the beast flew off, away from the castle again.

            The barrier Armin had called up dissipated, and the dark of the castle grounds oozed back into place. The barrier had only existed for a second or two at most. Armin had called it up at just the right moment.

            “It’s alright,” Armin said as Eren craned his neck to watch the dragon fly off. It was one of the small ones, maybe two metres long including the tail. Within a few moments all he could see of it was the faint glittering gold of its scales, and then it vanished into the darkness.  “These ones always come alone. They’re just reckless kids, really…”

            He finally stepped away from Eren, but did not put even a metre between them. 

            “You learned magic…” Eren's eyes still stung from the brightness of it. He’d seen barriers a few times when they’d been out in the wilds, but mages had been precious resources he'd had little access to. He’d certainly never stood _within_ one of the protective shells before. 

            “Of course I did,” Armin muttered. He dragged his sleeve across his face, which had still been wet. “A cold monarch’s a dead monarch...”

            It was a familiar saying on the continent, whether you were from the ice palaces of the far north or the green meadowlands to the south. Whether you were a good or an evil ruler, you had to expect calamity in some form or another to befall you during your reign. To be ‘cold’—that is, to have no access to magic—was to be horrendously vulnerable to all manner of nasty premature deaths. If you were an evil ruler, this was good news for your subjects, since it probably meant some Hero's rise to power. If you were benevolent, however, it meant your nation's troubles were just beginning. In either case, it frequently meant a great deal of turmoil. 

            Now there was something Eren had forgotten to worry about lately. He and Mikasa had tossed the idea back and forth from time to time. They’d never seen Armin conjuring magic as a child, and Eren had wondered once whether maybe he was never going to—but for the last year or so, the rumours of Armin's changed personality had eclipsed any worries that he might be cold. Apparently it was just as well. That barrier had been large enough to cover both of them, and strong enough to withstand a dive-bombing dragon, even if it had been a tiny salamander of a thing. It seemed they’d been right to move on to other concerns.

            Even the other worries didn’t seem quite so urgent, right at this moment. When Armin was up this close, and when it was torchlight falling across his face and not the faded sunlight that struggled through the dusty windows of the throne room, Armin looked more like himself. His button nose was the same—not an easy feature to be intimidated by, once you’d gotten a good look—and his eyes actually seemed to have some light in them.

            But gods above, he looked exhausted. Eren did not want to reach out for him again after how that had gone over the last time, but he couldn’t just let them stand there in silence until Armin got frustrated again and left.  

            “Armin, uh…”

            “Levi’s going to be taking another scouting mission out soon,” Armin said. “You can go with him.”

            Eren did his very best not to puff up indignantly. It was harder to get angry now that the facade had crumbled. Armin sounded remarkably like a nineteen year old boy trying to act like an aloof royal. 

            “Is that an order?”, Eren asked. 

            “No.”

            “Then I’m not going.”

            Armin nodded and gave a slow, resigned exhale. 

            “Alright, Eren.”

            Eren smiled to hear his name. He could not have helped it if he’d tried. In all this, he’d been half convinced that Armin didn’t even really remember who he was. Feeling that this was a sign he could go on, he said, “I mean, it’s my home too. Mine and Mikasa’s.”

            Armin’s head jerked up, and he looked right at Eren for the first time since they’d been in the throne room.

            “So is that why you came back?”, he asked. “Because it’s your home?”

            “Yes!”

            Armin’s features—his whole _person_ —relaxed a little.

            “Okay,” he said. "Make sure you report to Hannes." He turned to go. Eren didn’t try to stop him this time.

           

            The next afternoon, Hannes called Eren out of the mess hall before he’d had even a bite of his lunch. Mikasa was in court, standing stalwartly by the throne while Armin heard the last of whatever business there was to attend to that day. This meant that when Eren heard his name called he had only Jean to look to with an expression of dread.

            “What?”, Jean said.

            “Uh, this is—something's different, or wrong or something—tell Mikasa she can have my sword,” Eren said.

            “What the—why? You’ve barely been here more than a week. How could you have committed treason _already_ —”

            “I’ve got a pretty decent bow lying around that I never really learned to use, so you can have that I guess—”

            “ _What the hell_ —”

            Hannes, still over by the mess hall door, cleared his throat.

            “Gods above,” Eren said. “Alright. I’m going to—go now.”

            He marched over to Hannes steadily and without shaking. He was glad for that, and even more so when Hannes pulled him out into the hall but did not immediately toss him into a thicket of waiting guards. He didn't even grimly inform him that the king had ordered his execution. Instead, Hannes said, “Your hours have gotten switched.”

            “I—switched?” Hannes nodded and scratched at the back of his neck.

            “You’ve got mornings now, rather than midnights—sunup ‘til noon. It’s a short shift in the winter, so I might keep you past noon for a while at the start while I show you how the ballistas work.” He tilted his head a bit to one side when he saw Eren’s expression. “It’s not something I’d be angry about. It’s the best shift there is, really, and you’re not likely to get any lizards after you in those hours. They mostly turn up around sundown."

            Eren did his best to stop frowning. He’d been doing it more out of confusion than anger. Even beyond the fact that Hannes was his commanding officer, he was one of the few people in the castle who’d been there when Eren had first left it. Eren hadn’t had as much time to see Mikasa as he was used to since their shifts didn’t line up quite right, but he’d had at least one more friendly face around the castle this past week.

            “So it’s because you want to train me?”

            The corners of Hannes’ mouth tugged down slightly.

            “I do need to do that—sorry I hadn’t gotten around to it. There’s been a lot of security review lately… I haven’t had time. But I would’ve done it while you were on nights, except that it’s an order, direct from the king. So…try to make the best of it. If you really can’t make it work for whatever reason I can talk to him, but I’d try it out. He usually knows what he’s doing. Actually, Eren..." He lowered his voice slightly. "The hours are so short I wouldn't be surprised if you could pick up another position in the castle to go with it. Do you want me to look around for one for you?”

            Hannes remembered him well, clearly. Even as a very small child Eren had been happiest when he'd had a lot to do; he'd spent a lot of time bothering the guards about whether they could assign him to one of the outer towers, or a position guarding the throne room. 

            He almost said yes even now, without thinking. Then he paused.

            "No, sir." That earned him a puzzled look and a slight lean away, but then Hannes reasoned it through.

            "You've got something else you want to work on?"

            “Yes sir!”

            By the time Eren returned to the table, Mikasa had joined Jean from one of the other adjoining hallways. She was standing and staring at Jean, hard, and only ceased to do the latter when Eren approached.

            “I told you,” Jean said. “There was no reason he’d get his head chopped off—he’s just being a jackass.”

            “I was,” Eren said as he slid onto the bench. “It’s fine, Mikasa. Better than fine.” He lifted his bowl of porridge to his face and downed almost the whole of its contents in one go. Once he’d set it down with a clatter on the table, he said, “Did he get a little, uh…fragile? While we were away?”

            Jean, who had been squinting at him, said, “Hannes?”

            “Armin.”

            “…No? I mean, I kick his ass every time we spar, but I would by no means want to piss him off, ever. You should see his face sometimes when there's a real fight going on… ‘Fragile’ would be kind of hard to sustain given that he’s got dragons after him every odd week.”

            “Hmph. Alright.” That was discouraging. If Armin had naturally been of a weepy disposition it would be one thing, but if he wasn’t given to crying fits then Eren just felt all the worse about making it happen.

            Not all that day’s news was bad, though. Armin seemed to have halfway recanted on Eren’s banishment, and he'd certainly just freed up a lot of space in Eren's day, so maybe he wasn’t _quite_ as angry with him as Eren had thought. And if he just broke down crying like that, he wasn’t the frozen shell of a human Eren had feared he might have become.

            He sat there thinking about it with a furrowed brow until Mikasa plunked a bowl of soup down next to him.

            “If you’re that hungry,” she said as she took her own seat, “make sure you get vegetables too.”

            “Fine.”

            Mikasa and Jean passed a few minutes discussing whatever had gone on in court that day. Eren didn’t really care about what the nobles were up to. He had more important things to think about. Eventually, he threw his spoon down and said, “I’ve worked it out.”

            Mikasa looked up from her soup with half-closed eyes. She knew a dangerous tone when she heard it.

            “Worked what out.”

            “I’ve got to have a role in this story, right? Like, I’ve got to be a Player. So—”

            “If you go for ‘Knight’ I’m going to laugh in your face,” Jean said.

            “Why? The Knight’s the protector and support and all that, to Armin’s Prince. Or King. Whatever. And I can do that. Think about it—I’m his childhood friend, orphaned early, spent years training hard to come back and save him—”

            “Ninety-nine percent of the population of this castle was orphaned early. We live in a tiny country with more dragons than people. If the Knight is supposed to be special, it’s probably me just by virtue of my mom being still alive. Oh, and then there's the fact that—” Jean looked around briefly and then leaned in a bit closer. "I need to know you can keep your mouth shut." Eren nodded. "You've got to be sure."

            "I swear I'm not going to say anything." 

            "Me too," Mikasa said. 

            "Armin's not looking for his Knight, and if he finds them, he's said he's going to keep that quiet."

            Mikasa's brow furrowed.

            "I don't like it."

            "Well me either. Gods know I feel like he'd be safer if he had one, but that's just instinct talking. Practically speaking, once you've got a Knight, everyone knows exactly who to kill if they want to take you down. Also they know some big horrible event is on its way, and to attack while you're dealing with it. Basically he's pretending he's got no Players, and that he's just the predecessor to some major role down the line somewhere." It had to happen sometimes. Not every princess in a given nation could be  _the_ Princess, just like not every peasant girl could be a Rebel. It just wasn't tenable to have a fairy tale unfolding at all moments; there'd be no life left on the continent, at that rate. Stories, or at least the big kind that came in the books Armin had read to Eren and Mikasa, came and went in cycles.  

            “Alright," Eren said, leaning back again. He could accept it; it made sense that Armin would want to be cautious. There was no sense throwing his kingdom headlong into some major catastrophe, especially if that would attract hostile attention from their neighbours. If he knew anything about Armin, even Armin as he was now, it was that he would take his people's safety seriously. As far as Eren was concerned, nothing could have affected Armin so much that _that_ would ever change. "But that doesn’t mean I’m not a Player. Just that I can't talk about it if I find out I am.” There was always a set of them, after all, if a story was going to take place (and Eren was certain that one was). Every nation had its little quirks, but there were a few stock figures that had become so recurring as to merit some capitalization. The Vizier, the Knight, the Fool, the Mage, the Rebel—any given nation undergoing any given crisis didn’t necessarily have all of them, but there was always a handful. The Knight was one of the mainstays, and often among the most important. That went double if there was a royal line involved. 

            “You’re not the Knight,” Mikasa said flatly.

            “Why not?”

            “You’re just _not_ —”

            “I didn’t even start this to say that I was! But I am involved in this enough to be a Player, and Armin is obviously one. There's too much going on for him not to be. Oh, actually, I was thinking: what if he’s a dragon?” Jean spluttered and started to laugh. “I mean it! You’ve heard stories about changelings, right? Mikasa, I _know_ you have—you remember that wolf-man up in the mountains? Why not dragons?”

            “I’ve been watching his door for a while now—I think I’d’ve noticed him popping the roof off the tower and going for a flight,” Jean said. “Erwin would’ve worked it out by now anyway.”

            Mikasa narrowed her eyes slightly.

            “Speaking of Erwin…is there any chance that he’d be a Vizier?”

            Eren had rarely felt so gratified. If Mikasa was suggesting theories, she really must have believed on some level that Armin's situation wasn't quite right.

            “ _No_ ,” Jean said. “He’s just an advisor. He’s fine, mostly. Makes some weird calls sometimes, but...nah, I just can't see it. His only 'agenda' is the same as Armin's, which is the whole looking after the kingdom thing." 

            “Then it’s the curse,” Eren said.

            "Maybe..."

            Jean sighed. 

            “I know you haven’t exactly been close since you got back,” he said, “but have you heard him explain what it feels like? The curse?”

            Eren and Mikasa shook their heads. Jean pressed a fist to his own sternum.

            “He says it’s a weight, like a lump of iron, just sitting there in his chest. Sometimes it’s frigid and sometimes it’s molten, and it’s always heavy. That’s what he told me, anyway.”

            “Does it hurt?”

            “He didn’t say. It doesn’t sound _comfortable_ —but either way I just can’t see it turning him evil, you know? Which is missing the point that he’s _not_. Weird, sure. Tired of dealing with the heaping pile of awful he’s supposed to make a life out of, absolutely. But you’re part of that. You’ve been a cranky asshole since you got here. I’m not surprised he hasn’t wanted to talk to you.”

            “Then what do I do to get him to talk to me?”

            “Have you tried not making him cry?”, Mikasa asked. Eren felt all the blood leave his face. 

            “ _Mikasa you said you wouldn’t mention that_ —”

            “Fuck, Eren,” Jean said. “You know I’m his personal body guard? If I were to do my job right I’d have to kick the hell out of you.” Mikasa gave him a look. “I’m not _going_ to. But honestly—making the king cry, what an unbelievable pigbutt…”

            “I didn’t mean to,” Eren snapped. “I don’t even know why he did. Did he say anything to you about it? If you’re his bodyguard or whatever, could you ask him to talk to me?”

            “No.”

            “Why not?”

            “He’s the king. He can do whatever he wants—there’s nothing that’d be stopping him from talking to you, if he wanted to be talking to you.”

            Eren couldn’t manage to be that upset about it. If nothing else, Armin had turned up out there on the walls last night to see him. There was no reason for him to have done it; Eren certainly hadn’t asked him to.

 _So he does want to talk to me_ , Eren thought. He'd even gone and made sure Eren would have enough time to be stationed elsewhere. Maybe Armin did have a role in mind for him after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I made Armin cry on his birthday ;_; That was just an unfortunate coincidence in timing.  
> Also, sorry this was another info-heavy chapter, but I'm going to need it if things are going to make sense later... And I promise that this isn't going to turn into some weird academic thesis about tropes in fairy tales.  
> Anyway! Thank you for reading, and I'll get the next chapter out as soon as I can.


	3. Chapter 3

            Eren had forgotten how frigid this castle could get during the winters. He’d shivered a lot during the night shifts, but somehow the place seemed all the colder in the early morning, when he could see the castle and the surrounding countryside in all their pale colourlessness.

            Of course, it also meant he could see the snowy landscape rippling down and away from the castle walls and be reasonably sure that no oversized lizards were slinking around down there. The sky (clear today, high and light blue) offered no camouflage whatsoever for any approaching dragons. He could see why they’d prefer to attack at sundown and the hours after, though he resented them for it. Other than the tiny young dragon that had attacked when Armin had been out on the walls, he’d yet to see a single one since he’d come back home.

            He’d been assigned to this particular block on the schedule for a week now. He’d been taught the basics of firing the ballista, though as the several bolts lodged in the nearby hillsides attested, his aim could use some work. He would not apparently be given the opportunity to practice with a real dragon. Any time this was mentioned or his schedule came up in convesation, he was decidedly grumpy about the whole affair—but practically speaking, he spent each sundown out on the walls anyway. Sometimes he roved between the ballista stations. His fellow watchmen always appreciated another set of eyes out there. Other times he stayed nearer to his own post. Over the past week Eren had learned from his fellow wall guards that Sasha was the lead guard out there—not in any official capacity, but in terms of her actual shooting ability. If he could be up there to assist anyone during an attack—if he had to be certain that anyone always had their flank defended and bolts ready for firing—she was the best candidate.

            She was also, for some reason, making her way towards him now. It was barely noon. Eren had only just realized the time and started getting ready to go in after his shift. Sasha shouldn’t have been out here for another few hours at the least.

            “Is something going on?”, he asked when she reached him. She stretched her arms high above her head and then shrugged.

            “Hannes just said he wanted me out here today,” she said. “The kitchen staff was getting ready for something, though. Maybe there's going to be a party, and we can snag some actually decent food for once…”

            Eren snorted.

            “Maybe. I’m going to go find out, so… I’ll be back in a bit, probably.”

            His immediate instinct was to ask Hannes, who at this time was normally stationed in the tower by the north gate.  When Eren arrived there the place was entirely empty.

            By that point the hair on Eren’s arms was standing up. The three other people most likely to be able to explain all this to him should have been in court right at that moment, so Eren ran there next. When he shrugged through one of the side doorways, however, he found a barren hall and an empty throne. Mikasa, Armin, Jean, and everyone else had disappeared.

 

            Of course, they hadn’t vanished from the castle altogether. At the present moment Jean was just settling in for a nap on a bench in the library, while Mikasa followed Armin’s path between the shelves.

            The place made Mikasa uneasy. The shelves didn’t seem so overbearingly tall as they had when she’d been a child, and the titles were no longer inscrutable and ominous—but that was the problem. There were no titles to read. Hardly any books remained. The library, once a great mysterious maze to play in, was now just hundreds of shadowy spider-inhabited bookcases. Mikasa began to doubt that there were any books in the place at all.  

            “What happened to them?”, she asked as she followed the king. He moved more quietly than a lot of guards would be happy with. Someone less focused might take their eyes off of him and immediately lose track of him altogether. “The roof here’s not damaged. They didn’t get burned…”

            “They were sold,” Armin said. “We were mostly out of gold even before my grandpa died, and he said defense was more important. He started it, and after he died I kept it going. He wasn’t wrong…” They came around a shelf, and at last the familiar colourful spines came into view. There were a few dozen shelves tucked into this far corner that still contained some books; they were clustered over near one of the windows so their titles would be visible. Mikasa felt instinctively that this placement had been Armin’s decision. “I couldn’t let all of them go, though,” Armin mumbled, shifting a bit as Mikasa looked his way. Then, more coherently: “I think they could be useful now, so it’s just as well.”

            Whatever he was looking for, they must have arrived at the right shelf, because he found a ladder and started climbing.

             “Useful for what?”

            “Research.”

            Mikasa scowled up at him. The odds of Armin of all people having misunderstood her were nonexistent, so she could only assume he was being deliberately obtuse. He must have felt it even without looking around, because he said, “I need to be surer of my footing with the different Players, an after today I can actually do it. I'm just getting a head start so that if I'm not up for leaving the tower tomorrow I'll have something to work with.”

            If Armin was worrying over it, then Eren must not have been so far off the mark after all. Mikasa of course had known that Armin was a Player, and she’d suspected that he was the protagonist. If he was looking into his other Players with any depth, though, he must have been suspicious that a story was starting.

            “You haven’t talked to Eren yet, have you?”, she asked. 

            “Not in any really substantial way…”

            “Do it soon. If he gets bored or feels useless he’ll leave the next time Levi’s group goes out looking for nests.”

            “I know,” Armin said.

            “You can’t want that.” There it was—the chastising tone normally used on Eren, and only when it was really important. Armin winced at himself for having earned that.

            “I wish I did, honestly…”

            “He’s safer here.”

            “There are more attacking dragons here than anywhere else on the whole continent.”

            “But you’re here. You two protect each other. That’s just…how it goes.”

            Armin stopped pretending to be reading the titles of books and looked around at her.

            “And you, too,” he said. Mikasa looked back at him steadily. 

            “It’s different with me. You must have noticed.” 

            “I…was hoping you hadn’t.” He couldn't look at her as he said it. He was too cynical and too familiar with Mikasa not to have realized how absurd that hope had been, but actually being confronted with it directly was awkward all the same. 

            “Eren’s been thinking about it too. Have you made any progress at all?” Armin shook his head. “He’s considering that he’s the Knight.”

            “That’s…exactly the opposite of what I want him to be thinking…”

            “I know.”

            Armin dragged a book out from the shelf and then scanned along for another.

            “Does he know what the mortality rates is, for Knights? Most of them aren’t even _The_ Knight! They’re just—expendable preamble to set up how impossible the task is!”

            “Yes, but do you really think that he would ever accept that he could be preamble?”

            “I think he could, if it was what he had to do.”

            “Maybe in general, but not in this case.”

            “That's probably true. But do you realize how reckless he’s going to get if he runs with this idea, or tries to prove it?"

            "I do, which is why I want you to talk to him."

            "I'm going to. I'll do it today, and I'll—aghh—”

            His foot slipped on the rung. He’d barely started to fall before Mikasa caught him by the hips and then eased his feet down onto the ground.

            “Sorry,” he said quietly. Mikasa shook her head. “We should probably go over this. The two of us, I mean. I need to work out how it all fits together…”

            “I’ll help if I can. Just try to look after yourself, Armin, and not just the kingdom. The people need you alive, but. _..we_ want you happy.”

 

            It wasn’t that long before Eren found out why exactly the throne room had been left desolate. The lower halls of the palace were absolutely full of people bustling around preparing food and defences. A lot of guards were down there trying to sort out where they'd be stationed, including, as it turned out, Hannes. He’d given Eren the basic outline of the situation.

            The visiting nobles and diplomats were leaving that afternoon. All the fuss was to prepare for their departure. 

            Eren was not all that used to having mixed feelings. Generally he was quite polarized—absolutely thrilled, skin-blisteringly angry, utterly dejected—but this was news he wasn’t sure how to take. If Armin had no politics to attend to, no foreign nobility to appease, maybe he’d be freer to tell Eren what the hell was going on. But since he’d be freer to, if he all the same chose not to see Eren, it would sting all the more. 

            Rather than brood on it, Eren was helping to haul the long tables out into the castle’s central courtyard.

            “They actually demanded a feast,” Connie said. He had the other end of the table Eren was currently taking from the mess hall, through a tangle of narrow halls, to the cold winter air. “Like, they didn’t ask. Armin told them it was time they left, and they said ‘well we’re not going until we eat half your damn supplies.’ Or something. I wasn’t there. Jean was telling me.”

            “Why do we even have them here, if they’re just all-around terrible?”, Eren asked. “Armin should’ve kicked their asses out ages ago…”

            “Jean says it’s ‘cause of trade. Most of the farmland’s—” He grunted as the table wedged itself into a corner they’d been trying to turn. They paused so he could readjust his grip. “Most of it’s not really usable, seeing as how either it’s on fire or the farmers are, usually.”

            And Connie of all people would know. He was from the kingdom, if not a born-and-raised resident of the castle itself. He was from one of the farming towns not far from the castle walls. His hometown had seen more than its share of dragonfire.

            “Fair enough,” Eren said. “But still. Fuck those guys.” Connie snorted and gave the table one last shove. It popped free of the corner.

            “I kind of figure that’s why we’re doing this outside,” he said. “Oh, you want our food? Alright. Enjoy your meal of slush and ice shards.”

            “Wouldn’t it kind of undercut the whole trade ties thing?”

            Connie managed to shrug without fumbling the table.

            “It’s no good if they think we're total pushovers either. It’s just like with the dragons—if you don’t even bother to face them down, they’ll be picking over your corpse. They go for the people who run. So sometimes you’ve got to puff yourself up and look scary. That’s all this is. Wait wait, I know—we're giving them what you’d call a _chilly reception_.”

            “Wow, Connie.”

            “I know, I’m a comic genius.”

            “I don’t think it counts as a reception if they’re leaving, though…?”

            Eren’s shoulder blades met the wood of one of the exterior doors. He gave it a quick kick without bothering to turn around, and he and Connie entered the courtyard.

            “Fine,” Connie said, “but that works for my bit anyway.”

            “What ‘bit’?”

            “It wouldn’t hurt to be the Fool, is all I’m saying.”

            Suddenly Eren had a better sense of how he sounded to Mikasa and Jean. 

            “You do realize that Players die a lot, right?”

            “Okay, but compare the number of dead Players to the number of dead guards of the bloody castle. You and Mikasa and Jean’ll be fine, probably, or at least you’ll hang on long enough to matter. So I figure, Fool’s not too lofty, right? I should be able to get that, and Sasha should be able to get Rogue or something, and we’ll be mostly alright. I mean, I’ve thought of just leaving, but this’s kind of the fight that needs fighting if everyone at home is going to be able to just farm in peace, so…”

            They settled the table at the end of the nearest incomplete row. There were three or four of these rows set up in the courtyard, each with three or four long tables—more than Eren would have thought necessary. Since he spent so much of his time up on the walls he didn’t cross paths with the visiting groups very often, but he would have thought he must have if there were this many of them. The castle wasn’t _that_ large.

            “Where’re you going for this, anyway?”, Connie asked.

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean are you _going?_ I’m working, but it’s here in the courtyard anyway, so they said I’d be able to eat if I want. The food’s probably better than anything we’ve had around here in—ever. At least since I got here. I don’t know how fancy it’s supposed to be though. I don’t have that much formal stuff just lying around. Maybe I’ll grab a few plates and take one up to Sasha once my shift’s over…”

            “Yeah, she’s up on the…” His gaze found the stretch of wall beside the sixth gate, where Sasha was probably pacing or finding some other way to work off her midday energy. Armin had stationed his best shot with the ballista up there at a strange time, and nearly every guard in the castle seemed to be on duty. Hannes had looked as rushed and confused as any of them, so he probably hadn't been given full authority over this. The only other person who would have been given responsibility for the castle guards was Erwin, but normally he dealt with forming larger-scale strategies. 

            Armin must have been expecting one hell of a party.

 

            Half an hour later, once the benches had all been brought out, Eren pounded on the door to his own room.

            “Mikasa! Are you going to the—whatever the hell that thing is?”, he asked the closed door to their shared quarters. The space was big enough that at least a few other knights could have lived in it with them, but the population of the castle was so small that there was no need. Armin hardly had a standing army. Most of his knights were scattered throughout the kingdom or the surrounding lands on various quests. Some units, like Levi's, spent most of their time hunting dragon nests. Others were looking for any scrap of information about how to break the curse. Eren and Mikasa had been sent on only a few of the latter assignments. They'd always been rather more colourful and strange than simply scouting around for dragons, but Eren had always felt particularly ridiculous doing it when they could have been fighting. He'd always felt that the answer to lifting Armin's curse was with Armin, not in other royal courts and strange if beautiful countrysides.  

            “Yes,” Mikasa said as she opened the door. She was in full armour.

            “Oh—so you’re not…”

            “Going to eat and dance. No.”

            “Wait. Dancing is happening at this?”

            “It's possible." Eren squinted at her.

            "I don't think there are any musicians in this castle."

            "Maybe some of the other knights can play. I think you should go. All those places were set out so that everyone would feel like they could stop in, if they wanted to.”

            Eren wasn’t all that sure that he _did_ want to.

            “Do you think there’s any point?”

            Mikasa gave him a long, level look then, like she was trying to judge how much to say and how much he would understand.

            “All kinds,” she said at last. “A lot can happen at a royal party.”

            Their own experience proved her right. The princess at a distant nation they’d been sent to had hosted a ball, and by the end of it her curse had been broken and she’d claimed the throne. In another kingdom nearer to home, the peasant Hero had mounted her coup during one of the King's parties; the entire malevolent royal family had been ousted in the span of an hour.

            And it had been at a dance, or rather just outside of one, that Eren had first met Armin face-to-face. Eren had been sent out by his mother after he’d been caught shouting at one of the other courtier’s sons. Not far outside the throne room doors he’d found Armin, who'd left out of boredom. The prince had been crouching to pet the several castle cats who had turned up for the plate of fish he’d set out. Even at such a young age Eren had recognized the prince and known very well that he should not have been standing so close to him unattended. Before he’d been able to back away Armin had started talking about how strange it was that all these cats looked so totally different from each other, and whether there was a much larger population of cats in the castle than he’d thought. To this day, Eren had no idea whether Armin had heard him exit the party, or whether he’d just been thinking aloud. At the time Eren hadn’t given it that much thought. He’d said that he’d seen litters of kittens where no two looked alike or even that similar to either of their parents. For about five seconds Armin had looked utterly bowled-over to have been provided with this information so willingly, but he'd recovered quickly. A few dozen intensive questions about how much Eren knew about this mystery had followed. By the end of it, Eren had found a friend in the five-year-old prince. Armin, for his part, had found his first. From that point on whenever he had wanted to go on some great investigative mission in the castle he’d always turned up wherever Eren happened to be, and off into the corridors they’d gone.

            Now that Eren thought of it, he hadn’t seen a cat the whole time since he’d been back. Some of the ones in the castle had still been young when he'd left. He hoped they were doing alright.

            “I’ll go,” he said.

 

            Mikasa had tried and failed to get Eren to wear his armour. Much though he suspected something was fishy about this feast—and much though he knew Mikasa’s instincts were good—he didn’t think he would need it. Really, he wanted to be as mobile as possible if there was some chance of this feast going bad. His personal safety was not really his concern when Armin so clearly suspected some larger catastrophe was about to take place. He'd brought his sword, since if there was going to be a problem he wanted to be able to stab it, but he felt the armour would have been unnecessary. 

            Besides, if he went in armour he’d probably have to stay out of everything, for the most part. He did not expect the visiting dignitaries would accept having a fully armed, armoured knight wandering around in their midst. What he was really hoping for from all this was that he’d get a chance to talk to the king, and he couldn't do that if he was being barred from the tables where the nobles sat. Eren had dug up the nicest clothes he owned and tried in a halfhearted and futile way to smooth the wrinkles out of them. Now he was heading for the central courtyard.

            He did get his chance, though it was much sooner than he’d expected. He wasn’t even halfway along the route to the courtyard when Armin apparently sprang out from between two castle blocks yet again. This time, judging by the faint yelp Armin gave when he nearly collided with Eren, it was not deliberate.

            “Sor—I—um,” Armin said. His gaze went from Eren's collarbone, which he'd nearly walked into, to his face. Then he looked at the floor with enough fury that even Eren probably would have quailed, had it been directed at him.

            Since it wasn’t, he felt free to speak.

            “Shouldn’t Jean or someone be with you?” Even putting Armin’s personal safety aside, Eren thought he would be much more easily detected if he had a guard with him.

            “He's asleep.”

            “So wake him up! _I’ll_ go wake him up, gods above—where is he?”

            “No, don’t. I don’t need you two screaming at each other. I'm the one who told him to sleep in the first place. I was just running some books to the tower; I’m on my way back to get him now.”

            “Then I’m going with you. Something’s damn well off today, and you’re not just going to go strolling around the castle by yourself.”

            Armin gave him a familiarly flat look. He'd employed the same expression when they’d been kids on a few occasions, like the time Eren had suggested that actually maybe climbing onto the tower's roof so they could draw a schematic of the castle from the top-down was not the greatest idea in the world.

            “Fine,” he said, and continued along the corridor.

            Eren was fully prepared for the whole walk to be spent in complete silence, but Armin couldn’t last thirty seconds before he spoke again. “I’m sorry," he said abruptly. "About the reception you got when you and Mikasa first came back. That wasn’t handled very well on my part…” He resisted the urge to fidget. Eren wouldn't have noticed much even if Armin had not restrained himself. He was dressed now the same way he was for court; he was all cloak from the neck down, though now it was a heavier one meant for cold weather. “It wasn’t because I was angry with you.”

            “Huh. Why’d you cry?”

            Armin supposed he should be glad that Eren was as blunt as ever. If he was having this much trouble with the familiarly straightforward Eren, he’d be utterly lost dealing with one who’d learned the art of guile. It was difficult to feel any real gratitude when that bluntness was being used to bruise his ego, but on a theoretical level he could appreciate it.

            Besides, if Eren could be that open about what he meant and wanted to know, maybe Armin could be a little freer to do the same. Mikasa was right, after all. It was about time he spoke plainly to his friend.

            “I was feeling too much at once. I mean it was the first time I’d…” He paused to take a breath. One of his hands emerged from beneath the cloak so that he could run it across his bangs. “The dubbing ceremony wasn’t really me, in a personal sense. It was who I have to be at court. Out on the walls was the first time—at least for me, it was the first time I got to talk to you properly. As myself. And you were talking about what it was like outside like you wished you'd never come back, when I thought you'd been angry you'd had to leave in the first place, and I got a little overwhelmed. It wasn’t your fault. It _wasn’t_ your fault. Just me being…embarrassing… Angry—at myself, not at you. Sorry. I know that’s—offputting, and weird, but—”

            “Not really. I wasn’t gone so long that I just totally forgot what you’re like. ‘Pissed off at yourself’ was kind of a near-constant. It’s got pretty much zero impact on how much I like you.”

            Of course Eren wasn’t _thrilled_ to see that trait was still there, but at least now he knew the cause of that outburst had been from a source he recognized. The more he learned about this, the more ridiculous he felt for his initial proclamations about how much Armin had changed.

            By this point, Eren could accept that at least one facet of how Eren saw him now was not a change in Armin at all. He had always been pretty. It had just been an accepted and natural fact of Eren’s childhood, just like Mikasa’s own appearance had been. Eren had very beautiful friends and had never really thought too hard about it.

            Until that first night out on the walls, anyway. Maybe it had just been the shock of finding the whole castle so different, or of seeing Armin (taller and older and in full regal command of his court), but that had been a downright romantic fantasy. He’d thought a lot about Armin these past few years, and yes a few of those thought experiments had taken ridiculous or overly-saccharine turns. But until that first night on watch, his imagination had never run away from him so far that it had capped one of those daydreams with a kiss.

            Eren didn’t feel quite right thinking about that whole scenario when Armin was actually walking next to him. He was striding along to find Jean like he was marching to war, scowling slightly as he moved—probably irked at the observation about his character. Slight annoyance was not such a bad state for him to be in, relatively speaking. Kiss or no kiss, the last thing Eren wanted right now was to have to pull a bloodied Armin off of the floor and see whether he was breathing. The thought of it alone made the contents of his stomach curdle.

            He’d take pissed-off and aloof over bleeding and besotted any day.

            And so, while they were already tackling topics that were likely to annoy Armin, Eren threw out another. He might as well get as much accomplished here as possible, since it apparently might be several decades before he ever got to talk to his king again.

            “Why’d you swap my shift?”

            “A lot of reasons, but I put you on the shift you’re on now so that I could—” He paused. “I heard you think you’re the Knight…”

            “No, I don’t. I just figure I’m probably a Player, you know? Why?”

            “…You are one. I’m not sure what yet, but you are. Logically speaking it’s obvious, and also I can just…feel it. Which I’m not comfortable with as an explanation, so it needs more investigation, but it’s true. Until we work out what exact role you’re going to play, I want you to be free to move. After today you can go wherever you want, whenever you’re not on duty—pick up shifts if you like, or go out with the scouting parties, hunt, train—sleep, if you want. Do whatever feels natural.”

            “I should be fighting, though.”

            “Not…necessarily. Levi reported that you’re more than qualified, but there are enough other people here to make up for you not being on the walls at all times.”

            “Well what are you going to be doing, now that the others are leaving?”

            “Research and planning, mostly.”

            Eren nodded once. 

            “So I’ll help you with that. That's what's natural.”

            Armin’s step faltered for a moment, and he went a little pale. When he continued walking, his pace was faster.

            “I…don’t know, Eren.”

            “I thought you wanted to figure out what role I’ve got.”

            “I do! It’s just—with you saying things like that, just openly, without even—I mean—I can’t have you acting so familiar with me. Not when we’re where anyone could hear, or at least not when we have diplomats in. It was the same thing when you were talking in court. I couldn't respond like you wanted me to, because it's just... It’s not safe for either of us.” 

            “So at this feast…”

            Armin jerked his head to one side, away from Eren. 

            “Nothing. I’m sorry. It's better if you stay away from me today.”

            “Well what about after that? There won’t be any diplomats still hanging around, right?” Armin shook his head. “So then we can talk. Normally. Like people.”

            Armin ducked a little and bit his lip, and Eren was almost positive that he did it to disguise either a smile or a grimace.

            “Okay.” Then, more formally, with his chin lifted and his back straightened as if this were an official royal decree: “I’ll look forward to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that took longer than I intended. It's another mostly talky chapter, but next time actual Things should be happening! I have no idea when it will be ready to be published, but I already know what's happening in it, so hopefully (???) it will not take as long as this chapter did. Anyway, thanks again for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

            Connie had been right. The day only got colder as it went on. By the time Eren finally emerged from the castle interior, all the diplomats had their cloaks pulled tightly around them, some nearly up to their chins. They were shivering. Armin, seated at the centre of the head table, was not—but his hands were balled into fists and pressing down hard on the bench, even as he carried on what looked like a friendly enough conversation with one of his guests.

            Small bonfires were being set up throughout the courtyard. Eren could not help but notice that the first fires were started at the tables farthest from the nobles. The people nearest to the warmth were the actual residents of the castle—knights, cooks, servants, masons. Anyone who’d wanted to turn up. There weren't a lot of people who called the castle home in the first place, and of them, most appeared to have stayed inside where the wind couldn't lash at them. 

            Armin lit the last two fires himself, and he didn’t use any firewood to do it. He just lifted one hand, and a large gold-coloured flame sprang up at either end of the long table where he was seated. His guests watched it happen. They all exchanged a glance or two, as if they like Eren had thought maybe Armin lacked any magical talent whatsoever. Eren couldn’t stop himself from smirking a bit at the distinctly unhappy look on a few of their faces.

             _Yeah_ , he thought.  _You all just take a look at that, and you forget about trying to intimidate him. You don't have a chance._

            He thought of going over to join Jean and Mikasa, who were standing to either side of Armin and looking like they did not at all consider this a party, but he kept himself from doing it. Armin had said he didn't want Eren there, and it wasn't as if Armin _needed_ him there. If Mikasa was with him there was nothing Eren could add or offer, so it really was probably safer for everyone if Eren found his own place to sit. As long as he could keep an eye on things, he'd be happy enough.

            And he really did think that he'd _need_ to keep an eye on things. He noticed, as he walked between the rows of tables, that every single knight or guard who had stopped in had a weapon of some sort on them. It must have been an order. Another quick glance Armin’s way showed him that Mikasa and Jean each had swords in their belts and were carrying spears.

            Eren took a seat at one of the emptiest tables so that he'd be less likely to be roped into a distracting conversation. He cast an unhappy glance skyward. It had been so clear before, but now thick, low-hanging, steel-coloured clouds closed the sky off.

            “It wasn’t a bad move,” said the lone other person at the table Eren had chosen. She had pale blonde hair, and although she sat casually enough, there was a hard look in her eyes. There was no plate before her at the table. “It’ll make some of the diplomats uncomfortable, but it’ll show their queen he’s serious.”

            “Uhm—this is rude, but who are you?”, Eren asked. He’d seen her around the castle a few times, always in the company of the guests, but she’d never seemed to be in court with the others. She'd never struck him as hostile, but he had no idea how she fit. 

            “Just a mercenary. I’m just as free to think this is hilarious as the rest of you are.” She didn’t really _look_ like she thought it was hilarious. “I think it’d work better if he didn’t look so scared himself.”

            Eren had thought almost exactly the same thing when he’d seen how tense Armin was, but he bristled all the same.

            “Maybe he’s cold,” he said. “He put himself just as far from the fire as the rest of them.”

            She shook her head slightly.

            “It was smart. But you can't really think the whole point is just for show,” she said flatly. “Look at where he put the guards.”

            ‘Where he’d put the guards’ was more or less everywhere. Some were happily sorting their way through the plates of food, but many more were standing stiffly at their stations. They punctuated the whole perimeter of the courtyard.

            “You know it too,” the woman said. “You’re off duty but still brought your sword. If you’d been really smart, you would’ve brought your armour.”

            It could have been a threat. She could easily have been insinuating that she and the other visitors were going to drew their swords and start hacking at any exposed flesh they could find—but he didn’t think so. She was looking up at the sky as she said it. Looking west—the same way Sasha had her ballista pointed.

            Eren just couldn’t stay seated after that. He left his place at the table before he realized he was moving.

            “Hey, Connie,” he called ahead. He knew he shouldn’t have—he knew that really it would probably be better to keep all this quiet—but he was beyond caring at this point. “Be ready, alright?”

            Connie was leaning against the stone of the wall with his spear held loosely in one hand.

            “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know. That’s our orders anyway.”

            “Orders—”

            “Yeah. Anything happens, my unit falls in to the east side and get the diplomats inside as quick as we can.” 

            Eren nodded quickly and turned around again. He did his best not to run as he crossed the courtyard, but when he reached the steps along the east side, he took them two at a time. This was inevitable. It was going to happen, and it was going to happen today, and when it did he really had to be helping Sasha.

            He hadn’t quite made it to the top of the steps when there was a distant, resounding rumble. It might have been the sound of an earthquake if it hadn’t been coming so clearly from the sky. Everyone down in the courtyard fell silent, and for a moment Eren was the only one moving. Even if his mind was being jerked back through every encounter with a dragon he’d ever had, trying to recall the last time he’d heard a sound like _that_ —even if he wasn’t sure he’d ever met a beast as large as that one sounded—his feet kept moving.

            Down there at the head table, Armin closed his eyes, just for a moment. To his left, Jean stood a bit straighter. To his right, Mikasa shifted her weight and her grip on her spear. 

            There was another rumble from the sky, and this time it was closer and clearer. There was no way to mistake it for thunder or anything else. 

            The courtyard echoed with shrieks as the diplomats realized what was happening. Everyone was moving now. Eren thought he heard Erwin shouting orders, and Armin's voice (clear and high and surprisingly steady) above that, but he couldn’t quite make out any words overtop of his own heartbeat thudding in his ears.

            It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He reached the top of the wall, where the guards were all standing ready at their war machines, and raced past them. The sixth tower wasn’t far. He could get there. He could reach it before—

            The dragon let out a deep, screeching roar and plunged down through the clouds. Eren couldn’t stop himself from looking. He’d been right. He’d never seen a dragon this large in all those years he’d spent searching out nests. The thing was probably as long from snout to tail as the high tower was tall. It didn’t seem to fly towards the castle as much as drop inexorably downwards.

            And it was headed, quite plainly, for the northeast side of the courtyard. That corner was nearly empty. Most of the knights were helping the nobles and any civilians get out of the square; the tables were abandoned. But there were still at least three people over there, standing still and watching as the dragon descended upon them. Mikasa, Jean, and Armin had not left the courtyard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, okay, sorry about how this chapter ended and also how short it was. I just wanted to publish something as soon as I could, which meant cutting this off before I got into a lot of action scenes (I find them really time-consuming to write). ALSO sorry about the super long delay. Things got really hectic for me for a while there, but I should hopefully have more time now to write (though as usual, the update schedule is going to be pretty erratic for this one).  
> The next chapter is going to have a fair bit of violence in it. It's nothing too awful at this point (it might get worse later...? who knows), but I just figured I should give a heads up.


	5. Chapter 5

            Mikasa, Jean, and Armin had no choice but to scatter when the largest dragon landed. It was that or stick together and be crushed beneath its claw. Jean and Armin scrambled backwards with little sense of where their own limbs wound up, let alone each other. Armin lost track of Mikasa in the chaos of wind and dust and splintered tables. It was the best he could do to stay on his feet and keep his eyes locked on the beast.

  
            The dragon was short-necked, with a blunt snout. Two jagged rows of fangs were bared at Armin now—unequivocally, unambiguously at Armin. Those reptilian golden eyes were focused straight on him, never wandering to any of the people on the walls or the stragglers in the courtyard.

            Some part of Armin wanted to believe that he was one of those stragglers—that he just hadn’t run yet, that he was going to, that he had to. It had been years since he’d been this close to a dragon, and never had he faced down one this massive. He could not remember how to breathe, let alone run.

  
            What he could do was think. Armin locked eyes with Mikasa for a moment. It was barely a second, but they each knew what the other meant. She was by the dragon’s exposed flank. She had to take this chance to pry into its armour. When the dragon started languidly towards Armin, Mikasa kept pace with it, silently raising her spear and keeping it level with the base of the beast's neck. All she had to do was wait for the right moment—the moment when the lizard stretched its neck out so far that overlap between its neck plates was minimal. The moment when it snapped out to finish all this.

            Armin held one hand out in front of him, palm up, and pulled as hard as he could on his magical energy. The smallest, most pitiful flame flickered to life at the centre of his palm. It was battered nearly straight back out of existence by the breath billowing between the dragon’s parted teeth.

            _Here. I’m right here._ He kept his eyes locked on the enormous liquid-gold reptilian ones opposite him so that he wouldn’t see how his hand shook. _I’m what you want. Come on—_

  
            At first Armin didn’t see what caused it. The dragon shrieked and reared back, wings flaring high behind it—but there. Sticking out from the muscle of one wing, looking like a glorified splinter, was the missile of a ballista. Somebody let out a victorious whoop.

            It was too soon. The dragon was puffing itself up, not preparing to retreat. One of those enormous talons lifted high into the air. This did have the momentary advantage of clearing the space of draconic clutter. Jean, lost until this moment on the far side of the beast’s leg, caught sight of the king at last.

            “Armin!”

            Armin actually managed to look at him instead of the several tons of scale-encased fist about to drop on his head. On some level above all the panic and numbness, his mind was still working, still turning out numbers with cold precision. Jean was not going to make it here in time to bowl Armin out of the way, but he’d be too near to be unharmed. He wasn’t close enough to Armin for both of them to be covered by a barrier. Armin just didn’t have the power he’d need for a larger spell.

            As it always did, Armin’s mind delivered him an answer. He shut his eyes and cast the spell. There wasn’t enough time to breathe before he was dashed aside by the dragon’s claw.

 

            Eren saw it when Armin hit the ground, even if he wasn’t close enough by to hear whether he screamed. He nearly fell off the battlements.

            “Armin—!”

            A smaller dragon screeched above him on its way towards Sasha. There was nothing Eren could do for the king. Get the ammunition to Sasha. Protect her flanks. That was all he could do. Mikasa would get herself and the other two out of this. He’d seen her pull off miracles before.

            He took one of the spears and hopped up onto the rampart and started running again. He might need the extra height to stop a dragon from getting its claws into Sasha.

 

_Get on your feet—get on your feet **get on your feet** —_

            Armin’s mind could command him all it pleased, but his body wasn’t ready to listen. The best he could manage was to twitch his arm. Even that caused pain to screech through every bone and fiber. He didn’t know how far he’d been flung, exactly. He was sprawled now on the stone of the courtyard and wasn’t sure he’d be able to move again.  
Jean was yelling somewhere nearby, and Armin thought he’d heard Eren, but nothing made him focus quite like the shadow slipping over him. The dragon’s foot again. If Jean was in any state to be yelling, Armin’s barrier must have held. The king’s head was ringing—really the entirety of him was ringing—but he found enough coherence to be vaguely proud of that.

  
            _Not enough_ , he chided himself woozily as he pushed his palms against the stone and winched himself up, inch by shaky inch. If he could only cast one barrier at a time, everybody else was left undefended. He’d have to be a little more creative if he wanted to keep all this destruction fixed to himself. That was the only way to buy Mikasa the time she needed, and it was the only way to keep everyone in this courtyard alive.

            _Fixed to me…_

            His gaze drifted up to the claw that was hanging above him once more, waiting to fall.

            “Stay where you are, Jean!”

            The dragon brought its foot down again. There was a shrieking crackle, and then silence so deep Armin thought for a moment he’d died. That was before his mind overcame its panic and started processing images again.

            Four coppery claws, each as long as the blade of a farmer’s scythe, quivered within inches of Armin’s head. They could move no closer, and no farther away. Armin had summoned a barrier around himself, but also the beast’s claw. Each of the dragon’s digits was suspended in the blisteringly bright field of golden magic. Unless the dragon intended to swallow its own fist, it wasn’t getting Armin.

            That was the theory, anyway. Dragons, and particularly the large, ancient ones, were famously intelligent. It brought its arm up and then smashed its foot against the nearest wall. Barriers could only take so much pressure, and the amount they could withstand was dependent on their summoners’ concentration. Even if the dragon couldn’t crush right through, it could rattle Armin up enough in there that he’d lose his focus or impale himself on one of its claws.

            The creature was intent on smashing the king free of the barrier, which meant it wasn’t concentrating on the other humans scurrying about below it. It really should have been more worried. Mikasa Ackerman was down there, and she was armed, and she was extremely unhappy to see her friend batted around like this. While the dragon had its neck arced around, the plates of its natural armour were finally spread out enough for her to make her mark. Mikasa picked her point and drove her spear into it. The blade cut right in between the scales, into the flesh at the base of the dragon’s neck.

            It didn’t have quite the desired effect. The dragon screamed so loudly that the whole castle quivered, and then it slammed its trapped foot down with such rage-induced strength that Armin’s barrier flickered. When Mikasa drove the spear in further, the lizard thrashed aimlessly. At just the moment that its limb reached the farthest point of its arc, the barrier finally collapsed. The king was airborne.

            Armin couldn’t have weighed that much, but when he was falling from that great a height Jean couldn’t both catch him and stay on his feet, especially when he’d had to run to get beneath him in the first place. They collapsed onto the dusty courtyard with nothing but a vague thud and a curse from Jean.

            Armin didn’t have time to unscramble his brain, let alone conjure up another barrier before several dozen jagged teeth were closing around him and Jean. The dragon brought its jaws together, but they didn’t meet. They couldn’t, unless the dragon really wanted to force a spear up into its own brain. Already the point of it was digging so deep into the roof of its mouth that thick, dark blood oozed down the handle and onto Jean’s hands.

            Mikasa still stood with her spear lodged in the base of the beast’s neck. She hadn’t been able to move to help Jean and Armin without giving up that too-valuable piece of leverage, but she had been able to work her foot under a stray spear and kick it over to her fellow knight.

            One bolt and then another thudded into the dragon’s wings and passed straight through. Too many holes like that, and it wouldn’t be able to fly out of there. It knew that too. That big reptilian brain must have performed a calculation or two, because it blinked, and then twitched, and shook like a wet dog. It flung its wounded wings out wide, bent its knees deep, and then launched itself skyward.

  
            Every human present fell still and waited. Even Eren up on the wall froze as he was, standing on the parapet with the splintered remains of a spear held ready as if it might be any use at all. The small dragon who had been hectoring Sasha had wrenched the whole metal blade off of the spear—it still had the metal caught between its teeth—but its eyes were tracing the retreat of the larger beast. It, too, was watching for any swish of the great dragon’s tail, any shift of its wings, that might show it was coming back.  
There was none. It kept flying. Every smaller dragon either turned midair or took off in order to follow. Within moments, the castle was clear of attackers. For a full ten seconds there was silence apart from the distant thudding of wings battering the air.

  
            “Sssshit,” Jean wheezed, finally letting his head clunk against the stone. The spear clattered down next to him. “You dead yet, Armin?”

            It was the last thing he managed to say before a crowd of knights and advisors converged on them.

            Eren thought he had seen the king stir before the mob arrived on the scene, but he wasn’t sure. He was sprinting down the stairs just as quickly as he’d run up them to aid Sasha. This time, at least, gravity was on his side—more or less. He slipped and tumbled down a flight, but that gave him an idea. Once he found his feet he leapt right over the side of the stone staircase and into the courtyard, where he found himself vaulting over smashed tables and benches and trying not to slip on the upended feast.  
He reached Jean before he even caught sight of Armin. The young knight was sitting on what was left of a table after the prime dragon’s foot had come down on it. There was an incredibly vivid purple bruise already spreading across the right side of his jaw.

            “Holy fuck—are you even alright?” Eren asked.

            “Yeah, fine,” Jean said. He was dusting fragments of wood out of his hair. “Can’t say I didn’t see it coming.”

            “You’re actually pretty good at this.”

            “You didn’t do half bad yourself… Figured you’d come dropping out of the sky at some point and impale yourself on a spike, to be honest.”

            “I’ve been at this longer than that, jackass.”

            Since Jean seemed more or less alright, Eren pressed on. He pushed his way through the crowd, which grew denser and denser as he went, until finally he saw the now-familiar cloak. Armin was on his feet and in conversation with Erwin.

            “No casualties,” Armin said. “I don’t think it’s coincidental. This is the way it’s gone every time we’ve tried this. And this proves that Levi’s unit can be out in the field—we have a handle on things here without him stepping in. He can accomplish more out there.”

            “We’ll keep it in mind next time,” Erwin said with a slow nod. He glanced up to the battlements, where one short figure was patrolling the perimeter, spear in hand. “I’m not sure this was as decisive as you want it to be, though.”

            “How many tests do you think we can do? People are at risk every time, and we only have so many knights. We can’t play with them. The more people we send out, the sooner we find the nest, the sooner this is all over.”

            “We’ll go over it later,” Erwin said. "You should talk to Hanji's unit first." Then he bowed out. Most of the crowd dispersed when he left. There were scrapes to attend to and a courtyard to clean, after all.

            Eren would get to those duties in due time. Just barely did he force down the impulse to grab Armin’s elbow and pull him around to face him. Instead, he said, “Armin! Are you alright?”

            Armin turned. There was blood dripping down his face, and he could not possibly have looked happier.

            “Eren! It worked!”

            “What worked? That was the plan?”

            Armin’s glance darted to the side.

            “Um, not exactly—we’ve tried planning to get attacked before, but it ended really…really badly…but the plan we had in place in case we got attacked worked. Nobody got hurt! Wait, are you hurt—”

            “No. You are, though—”

            “Oh—no, it’s only surface damage.”

            “Armin your face is bleeding—”

            “No, it’s alright. Watch, I’ll just—” He crossed one hand over the other and held them both about two inches away from his forehead. He shut his eyes and scrunched up his face, and absolutely nothing happened. “Is it working?”

            “No! What are you even trying to do?”

            “It’s a healing spell. I’d never been any good with them, um…was hoping that maybe…field emergency and…proper motivation, I…”

            He wavered from side to side, but when he really started to teeter Mikasa appeared out of nowhere and scooped him up. Eren was less surprised by the way she’d just popped up there than he was by the fact that Armin didn’t demand she put him down.

            He supposed it had something to do with the greyness in Armin’s face, and the way his head was lolling despite his efforts to keep his neck straight.

            “Hanji will heal you,” Mikasa said. “Eren, you’re coming too.”

            “I’m not hurt!”

            “I saw you fall down those stairs. If I can’t stop you from getting hurt I can make sure you get treatment afterwards.”

            “She’s right,” Armin said. He was leaning back over her arm and looking like the most unkingly monarch to have ever existed, with his bangs all fluffed up and hanging away from his face ridiculously and blood streaked across his cheeks. “Especially if you hit your head. It can be hard to tell how bad it is.”

            “Because you’re one to talk,” Jean said. “C’mon. Hanji’ll be thrilled to give another demonstration for how it all works.”

 

            Hanji might have been thrilled, but Eren didn’t get to know that. Armin would not have him in the room while he was healed—he wouldn’t have anyone in there with him. Eren, along with Mikasa and Jean, had to wait outside in the hallway in some dingy lower-level party of the castle.

            Eren gnawed on the back of his thumb and stared at the heavy oak door. Mikasa tapped him on the shoulder, and when he didn’t immediately respond she grabbed his hand.

            “You did well today,” she said after a while of letting him keep his silence.

            “Thanks.”

            “And we’ve seen worse than that.”

            “Yeah.” Of course they had. They’d seen comrades bitten in half or swallowed whole. “It was just…I’d never seen them here before. Not like that, anyway. It was…”

            All apparently quite run-of-the-mill. As they’d been trooping into the castle he’d seen Connie going up to the wall with two plates in hand. Armin had not been so cheerful this whole time since Eren had back. Erwin, Levi, and Hanji had all been so unconcerned about the whole affair that they hadn’t even bothered to join in.  
But honestly, the more Eren saw, the more worried he was.

            “Did you know that was the plan?” Eren asked. Mikasa shrugged a little.

            “He’d considered the risk. We knew there was going to be an attack sometime over the next three days. He wanted to get the diplomats out before then, or at least keep them in the lower levels of the castle, but they put up a fight, so…he did his best with what he had. If we’d been in the throne room when a dragon of that size attacked, people would have been crushed by debris. This way everyone could scatter inside if they needed to, and he’d still be out there drawing the dragons’ attention.”

            “So he was always going to get tossed around like that, then.”

            “No. That didn't need to happen. It won’t happen again.” Her fingers tightened over Eren’s. “I won’t let it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha...haha...uh...whoops?  
> This chapter was written almost in its entirety about, oh...a year and eight months ago? (Sorry...). All I really did now was string it together and publish it in a state that would have embarrassed the hell out of me last January. There might be some coherency/continuity issues for that reason--if there are I'm sorry about that and I'll look it over for those later--but I just wanted to get some momentum going again. I don't remember everything about my intentions with this fic, and wow am I ever not sure about my characterizations anymore (especially as they relate to recent chapters, since I am hopelessly far behind on canon), but I do have notes about where this is going and full knowledge of how it ends. And that's something!  
> Anyway, sorry about the huge, unplanned delay! I've been having a really weird time lately, but I will finish this as quickly and as well as I can.


	6. Chapter 6

            The visiting nobles were all too quick to flee the morning after the attack. They didn't so much as help to clear away the mess in the courtyard. Eren, assigned to that very task, missed their formal dismissal, but their absence was tangible. Most of the castle’s residents relaxed. Once the portcullis snapped shut behind the last nervous horse, the locals were a little less formal with each other, stood a little more comfortably.

            Eren was glad to be rid of them, though his eyebrows did tug down a little when he realized that the blonde knight had vanished alongside them. She’d seemed in on things, somehow. He wished he’d had the chance to ask her some questions.

            Eren didn’t see Armin for the rest of the week. The king was busy, everyone told him; he had plans to make, reports to hear, maps to fill. That small, bright light at the top of the tower was the only sign Eren even had that Armin had not died on Hanji’s medical table.

            Finally, one day when Eren was heading out to patrol the walls, he spotted Armin down in the same courtyard where the dragon had landed. He had his head down as if in concentration. At first Eren thought he was just out there to think, but then Armin called forth a bubble of golden magical energy, no bigger across than a dinner plate. It hung before him, suspended motionless in midair, until Armin spread his hands. The barrier ballooned outward and shot up. After a few moments, when it was wider than the tables in the mess hall and at least twenty metres from Armin, it burst into embers and faded.

            For a moment—the span of a blink just before it burst—Eren would have sworn it had flickered blue.

            The sparks hadn’t yet faded from Eren’s eyes when another barrier spring up before Armin. Again it soared away from him, and again it exploded into so many harmless, glittering lights that faded before they hit the stone tiles.

            One corner of Eren’s mouth twitched. Armin was testing his limits—the scope and distance of his barriers, how many he could summon, what he could do with them. That was the single most Armin-like thing he had done since Eren had come home.

            _Keep at it, Armin,_ Eren thought, and turned his back so he could survey the plain in which the castle sat.  

 

            It was a long shift with no sign of any suspicious reptilian activity. When another guard emerged to relive him, Eren stumped back inside. Jean, who had just finished his patrol of the southern battlements, was the only other person in the mess hall. 

            “You feel bad yet?” Jean asked, about a minute after Eren had taken a spot at the table.

            Eren looked up from his stew.

            “About what?”

            “Picking on Armin.”

            “I wasn’t _picking on him_ —I yelled at him a little and he burst into tears. Not like I’ve never yelled at him before…”

            “Well I’d think you’d know to be more careful now, given the state he’s in.”

            “The…what state? You mean the curse.” Jean shook his head slowly.

            “You couldn’t tell for yourself?”

            “Nobody said there was anything—any state, happening here, what the fuck are you talking about—”

 

            There were nine hundred and twelve steps in the castle’s tallest tower. Eren launched himself up them in record time and ran straight into the heavy oak door at the top. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t locked, or even fully closed. It swung open when he hit it.

            He did stop all the same. Eren stood, panting, in the doorway; Armin sat, wide-eyed, at his desk.

            “Is something happening?” Armin asked. Some of the ice had flaked away from his tone out of sheer surprise.

            “You’re sick!”

            “I am?”

            “Jean said you were sick! Or—dying, or—”

            “I'm not, though?”

            “But he said—”         

            Eren stopped. Jean hadn’t really _said_ much of anything at all. He’d insinuated.

            A few years ago now, Levi’s squad had come under attack while they’d been in camp. Eren had been the lone person too slow to make it out of his tent in time. One of the dragons had picked the thing up and flown back for its nest with its prize, Eren included. By the time the others had arrived to rescue him, Eren had been dripping in dragon spit after the beast's efforts to clean him up to a shine like its other treasures.

            That had been less embarrassing than this.

            “He fucking _pranked me_ —gods…” Eren turned around and began to lurch back down the stairs. Already he was pulling his hair and giving himself a vigorous internal cussing-out. This probably would have continued down the remaining nine hundred and ten steps, had Armin not spoken.

            “I don’t mind, if you want to stay.”

            Eren was back up those two steps and over the threshold before he’d finished exhaling. Only once he was in the circular room that Armin called home did it occur to him that this was his first time back here since he’d left the castle. Really, apart from the addition of a large desk, the place was much the same as he remembered it, complete with the bookshelves covering most of the walls and the brassy spyglass on its tripod near the south window. The only major addition was the desk, which was heaped with maps, letters, orders, reports, and reference books that probably weighed more than the monarch himself.

            Armin was pretending to be attentive to one of those maps now, though the fact that his eyes were stuck to one spot gave him away. Eren was not the only one feeling awkward here.

            At least the typical amorphous drapery had been set aside. Eren supposed it made sense that Armin didn’t dress like that in his private quarters, though he’d never paused to consider it before. The blue tunic the king wore now gave a sense of the shape of him— _Still too skinny…maybe he really has been sick?_ —which was of some reassurance.

            “What’re you doing?” Eren asked. Tact and smalltalk weren’t his two greatest strengths.

            “Planning a route for Levi’s next expedition.”

            “I don’t see why you have to spend all this time strategizing. I figured you’d’ve had this beat by now.”

            “I could have, maybe. They won’t let me do anything too risky.”

            “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met! They should just trust you!”

            “It’s…not bad, to not just take orders. More people thinking is generally better.”

            “Well what’re these risky ideas?”

            Armin just shook his head slightly.

            “We’re not going to use them. It doesn’t matter. Erwin’s probably right, anyway. I’ll think of something better.”

            Eren did not have the slightest doubt that Armin would. Since he therefore judged Armin to have the situation entirely in hand, he looked around once again. This time, he spotted something he hadn’t noticed before. Armin’s desk was not the only part of his room which was littered with books. His bed was almost totally buried beneath them. These were not the same sort, however, burdening the desk. _These_ were tales and histories from far-flung kingdoms, and parts of the world no monarch ruled over.

            “So you still do read these, then,” Eren said, shifting a few of the books so he could look at the ones beneath.

            “Um… _still_ implies some kind of continuity, so no, not really. I’ve started reading them again, though.”

            “Why?” There was silence for so long that Eren thought he’d gone back to reading—but then, Armin had always been a fast reader, and he wasn’t turning any pages. Eren opened one of the books and flipped idly through it. This one was some old archetypal tale of a seaside kingdom and its beleaguered prince, with large, detailed (if stylized) illustrations of castle, court, and coast alike. Eren snorted a little when he saw the depiction of the mermaid central to the narrative. “That’s not what mermaids look like.”

            “No?”

            Eren glanced up and found that Armin had been watching him, even if he glanced away quickly.

            “Nah. They’ve got these sharp spines coming out of their arms and their shoulders, and their eyes are huge. Bigger than ours are.”

            “Is that to help them see when they’re farther under water, where there’s less light? I wonder what preys on mermaids, that they’d need spikes…” He chewed on his thumbnail.

            “Well…what preys on dragons?”

            “Apart from us?”

            Eren shrugged.

            “We don’t _eat_ them.”

            “That...makes it worse, not better.”

            “They struck first. Not that I’ve got any idea why. What problem would they have had with your parents that’d be so bad they’d curse your whole line…?”

            Armin shook his head.

            “I don’t know.”

            “It’s just—they’re not naturally vindictive or anything. Some of the ones I’ve seen in other kingdoms—they’re good. Like, actively good. They’ll defend farms, guard princesses, whatever they’ve decided needs doing. And they do _decide_. They’re smart. Not enough to talk—”

            “Maybe we just don’t speak their language.”

            “Maybe!” Eren passed a hand through his hair. “They’re amazing, honestly.”

            Armin looked at him directly now.

            “I don’t understand what you want,” he said. “You're so interested in dragons, and all you talk about in the court is killing them."

            “What I _want_ is to go back out there, but properly this time. It’s got to be me, you, and Mikasa, or it doesn’t count. To make that happen, I’ve got to get you out of this curse, right? Which’ll mean killing some dragons. Fine. And it’ll mean, afterwards, we can come back home. Everyone can.”

            Armin glanced, just for a fraction of a second, at one of the books on the bed.

            “What?” Eren asked.

            “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

            Armin got to his feet and started to gather up the books. Eren didn’t know what else to do but help him. They transferred them all over onto the desk.

            “Don’t push them so far back,” Armin said after Eren had slid an armful onto a clear patch. “They’ll get soaked.”

            “Wh—” Eren looked up. Patches of the walls were glittering in the glow of the lamp on Armin's desk. “Is that—that’s frost on the walls! Inside the walls!”

            Armin waved a hand vaguely.

            “It gets cold.”

            “Then you shouldn’t be in here! You’re—you’re really reckless.” Armin paused halfway across the room.

            “Are you making fun of me?”

            “What? No.”

            “You fight dragons for a living, and I’m reckless for spending time in a slightly drafty tower?”

            “Well, you spend time in a slightly drafty tower which dragons are known to attack, so there’s that. I mean, you could have abdicated by now.” Armin had picked up another book and was flipping through it. “It seriously is shitty in here. It’s so fucking cold!”

            “You don’t have to be here.”

            Eren scowled at him.

            “You’re the one who said I could stay. Why do you wear those cloak things, anyway? Are they warm? They’re awful.”

            Armin’s eyes stayed fix to the page.

            “They’re supposed to be. I’m supposed to look awful.”

            “Why…?”

            “They make me look bigger than I am, and more imposing—if I look all soft and small, it’ll only encourage people.”

            Eren blinked.

            “Encourage people to what?” Armin cleared his throat. “Armin?”

            The book sagged slightly between Armin’s hands.

            “You said yourself, I could abdicate—just run off into the mountains, found some cave to hide in. It would mean everyone else got their homes back. Wherever I go, the curse goes—so I could take it with me. The only reason I haven’t is that Erwin thinks it would lead to a power struggle amongst the neighbouring kingdoms. And maybe he’s right. But that’s only a chance, which I could offset by appointing a successor—and it’s a certainty that while I’m here, everyone who belongs here can’t be. People do know that. The only thing stopping everyone from coming home and being happy is—”

            “But you’re not a thing! Is this what you’ve been doing this whole time? Just—sitting around thinking about when would be the most convenient time would be to jump down a dragon’s throat or let an assassin stick a knife between your ribs?! You’re not like this! Armin isn’t like this!”

            Armin snapped suddenly into a more royal, less natural posture. He didn’t need those cloaks after all.

            “Then what am I like? You think I'm a coward, and want to keep myself alive at the expense of a whole kingdom...? You're one of the most selfless people I've ever met—how can that be what you want me to do?"

           " _No_ _!_ But you'd find a better way—"

            "Why is your idea of who I am more important than mine? You weren’t even here—how I was when we were kids doesn’t matter now." Armin's hands balled into fists, but it wasn't a threatening gesture. He pressed them hard against his own temples, as if struggling against a sudden headache. "What matters is, I'm the king, so I have to solve this situation for everyone—not just for me. I’m not the point.”

            “You are for me! If that’s your job, mine’s supposed to be keeping you safe! It’s not just—fighting dragons for the glory of it. It’s for—”

            “Your kingdom! Yes!”

            “Which is my home, and you’re part of it! Go on trying to get eaten if you want, but I’m going to go on trying to stop you. That’s my role in this—my proper Role. It’s got to be, right? Because you’re the Hero no matter how much you make yourself out to be some huge Evil King, and if you’re the Hero then I’ve got to _something_ —maybe even the Kn—”

            He stopped entirely of his own volition. Armin looked suddenly as if he were in a great deal of pain. “What—what is it? Are you alright—is it the curse?”

            “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just…” He ran his fingers across his forehead.  “I said I would look into it, and I am.”

            “Have you worked it out?”

            “No.”

            “Are you going to tell me when you know?” Armin hesitated, which was answer enough. “You don’t have to hide it—I’m not going to act like a jackass just because I know. I act like a jackass anyway—ask Jean, or Mikasa.”

            “I…doubt she would say that.” He paused for a moment, and when he continued Eren hated how careful his tone was. More than that he hated that he’d given Armin cause to _need_ to be careful. “First of all, odds are almost nonexistent that I’m the Hero.” Eren opened his mouth to protest, but Armin forced himself onward, even though he had to look at the floor to do it. “More than that, I don’t think it’s good for you to tailor your behaviour based on some…pre-existing notion of your Role. It’s dangerous when we don’t know what it is—acting like a Knight if you aren’t that will only get you killed—and even once we figure it out… It’ll only put pressure on you which, if the Role system makes any sense, you shouldn’t even need to accomplish whatever your part might be. If things are really that concrete, there won’t be any need for that. So there’s no point in you worrying about it.”

            “Then why are _you_?” Eren waved an arm towards the desk. “This is research. You’re serious about it.”

            “Because I’m—” Armin clapped a hand over his forehead then, but if it was an attempt to stop himself from talking, it failed terribly. “I’m afraid that you’re the Catalyst!”

            Eren’s brow creased.

            “The…? I’ve never heard of that.”

            Armin sighed and seemed to shrink by about half a foot. He turned back to his desk and started turning the pages of one of the largest, oldest books there. He handled each page carefully, as if it might dissolve under his hands.

            “That’s because you always see things from the Hero’s end. You’re always helping the Princess or the Rebel Leader. The Catalyst is on the other side of the story. The Villain’s side. Specifically a Fallen Villain. They’re the person the Villain loves most, and so they’re the one who has to die, before the story really gets moving, in order to complete the Villain’s fall.” When he turned again he held the book out to Eren. It was an illuminated manuscript, vibrant in blue and red and gold. This particular page showed a queen screaming and clenching her fists over the prone form of a knight. Blood was leaking out through the knight's visor. The boughs of the trees that framed the scene curled towards the queen, growing more twisted the nearer they got.

            “Nah,” Eren said. “No.” He put one hand on each cover of the book and closed it, without ever taking it from Armin’s hands. It remained suspended there between them. “That’s not you. That is not how you’d be. You’d be upset, like a person would be—because that’s what you are, whether or not you’re the damned Hero. You’re a person, and people get upset, and care about people, and—do you really think some asshole standing on the brink of becoming a full-fledged Villain would pick some shitty inconsequential son of a court doctor as a Catalyst?”

            Armin bristled.

            “You’re not inconsequential!”

            “That’s exactly my point! I should be, but I’m not to you, because you’re Armin. You don’t want me to worry about which Player I am, so fine—I won’t. I don’t care. All that matters is, you’re Armin.”

            All of a sudden it struck him how, precisely, Armin had described the Catalyst—what they were, to the Villain.

            For a moment there was nothing but silence and the weight of the book pressed between two sets of hands. Eren had not had such prolonged eye-contact with Armin for years, if he in fact ever had. Even when they’d been children Armin’s glance had always flown on to other things—the mountains on the horizon, the countless stars, the insects on the castle walls.

            Eren’s mouth was open for a full second before he pushed any sound out of it. 

            “Can I—”                                                                                                                               

            “Yes—”

            It was an awkward thing—nothing like the classic kisses Eren had seen or heard about, where dark towers crumbled, villains screamed and disintegrated, citizens cheered. The book slipped clean out of their hands and landed directly on Eren’s foot. Eren stumbled forward, Armin lurched back, and the whole thing would have been written off with an awkward laugh and silence had Armin not found a wall to support his shoulder blades. Even so, Eren stood a solid three inches taller than Armin; he had to bend his neck to kiss him properly.

            Even for all that, it was the easiest thing imaginable, once he just got close enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh. SMOOCH. Really abrupt, awkward smooch. If you're wondering if them kissing means we're near the end...no. No it does not. This has not become nearly enough of a mess yet. The next chapter will be relatively short and will deal with immediate repercussions, so it should be done relatively soon! 
> 
> Sorry that this is still taking so long; September was a hell of a month for me ;_; In the end I figured it was better to just post the chapter rather than sit on it until I'm 100% happy with it, so here we are. I might make some slight alterations later if anything looks really bizarre or out of continuity on re-read. 
> 
> Which reminds me: I took a quick glance through to help refresh my memory and...oof. I've been thinking about going through and fixing up the previous chapters, but I'm not sure. In the mean time, thank you to everybody who's left a comment (there are a lot of lovely comments aaaaaaah)! I read all of them, and I'm going to try to respond to them tomorrow, if I have time.


	7. Chapter 7

            “It’s really cold…”

            “Nmmm?” Eren said; he pressed the sound against Armin’s forehead. He’d never kissed anyone before, and he didn’t want to stop. He’d moved away from Armin’s mouth mostly out of courtesy when he'd felt Armin wanted to talk. 

            “The frost.” Eren leaned back, and—yes, Armin was pressed bodily against the glittering surface of the wall. Eren started back a pace, freeing Armin to move forward.

            “Oh—gods. Sorry.” Armin was smoothing down the hair at the back of his head, which Eren was sure was dripping wet—but Armin didn’t seem especially upset about it. In fact, he was vividly, unmistakably, downright luminously blushing. Knowing he’d surprised Armin and hoping to level the playing field somewhat, he said, “I-I didn’t really forget about the frost so much as hoped maybe it’d be gone.”

            Armin overcame his embarrassment enough to look at Eren askance.

            “Why would it be?”

            “Sometimes things like that happen. With curses, I mean. Me and Mikasa were in this one kingdom, and the princess was under a spell but then the right woman kissed her and…I thought maybe it’d work.”

            “I…guess it’s good to know your motivation. But did getting kissed also cure the princess’s kingdom of weather and condensation?” Eren had never been so happy to be laughed at, but that didn’t mean he knew what to say. “It’s alright. You might be able to actually get rid of the frost.”

            Armin moved towards the middle of the room again, and Eren followed. The ache of disappointment sat there in Eren’s chest, less because he’d hoped it would be _him_ who broke the curse than simply because he’d hoped Armin would be free of the damned thing.

            Armin didn’t seem to even be thinking about it.

            “Levi said nobody ever taught you magic,” he said. “Is that true?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Hanji’s been teaching me. Mostly all I’m good for is barriers though, which is ridiculous…”

            “It kind of sounds like barriers are exactly what you’d need, though. You would’ve been eaten if you hadn’t had them.”

            “But I have no attack power. At all. I might as well be cold, the way this is going… At least if I could use healing magic I could be of some use after the fact. As it is, all I can do is stand in a bubble and wait it out.”

            If what Armin had done the week before was what he called ‘waiting it out,’ Eren was not looking forward to seeing what he’d consider active participation.

            “Anyway, I do know the theory, even if I can’t follow through on it,” Armin said. “Fire-starting’s just a simple intentionality spell—all you really need is willpower. You’ve got more than enough of that.” He held his hands out, one resting atop the other. “All you do is provide the proper focus, like this, and want it to appear, and…there.” The air gave a little pop, and then a condensed but brilliant ball of gold flame was cupped carefully in Armin’s palms.

            “It doesn’t burn you?” Eren asked, frowning as he watched the tiny flame batter gently against Armin’s curved fingers.

            “It can’t hurt its caster, no.”

            “I still don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

            “Why not?”

            “Levi never let me—he says I’ve got too much energy for it. It attracts dragons, you know.”

            “Are you sure that’s specifically what he was worried about? Maybe he just didn’t want to lose his eyebrows. I’m not that worried about mine. I have a lot to spare.”

            “This seems like a bad idea…”

            Armin dropped his hands, and the flame disappeared.

            “Just don’t set any of the books on fire and we’ll be fine.”

            Eren held his hands out as Armin had, with his hands cupped as if to drink from.

            “So I just…want there to be fire?” he said as he scowled intently at his palms.

            “Basically.”

            “Okay.”

            For one, two, three seconds there was nothing, and then the most searingly bright flash imaginable split the room.

            When Eren’s eyes finally cleared of the splattering of green and pink after-images, he saw that Armin had flung himself back against the floor, with only the top half of his torso winched off of the stone. His eyebrows were indeed intact, though they were much higher on his forehead than normal.

            “That was amazing! Do it again!”

            Eren pitched forward to help Armin. 

            “Are you serious?”

            “Don’t you want to see what you can do? You’re really talented, Eren—”

            Even as Armin spoke, Eren was hauling him to his feet and glancing him over for any obvious singe marks.

            “Is it supposed to explode like that?” he asked.

            “Not really, but that was your first try—with a bit more focus, you’d be able to do whatever you wanted with that spell.”

            “Not much use against dragons, though.” He was looking at his hands again, though he held them far apart from one another lest he inadvertently blast the roof off the tower. “Levi tried it once, from up close—just to see if there was any chance at all.”

            “That was years ago,” Armin said. “Erwn asked him to—we thought maybe they weren’t really fire-proof, but were just immune to their own spellwork, like we are…”  

            Armin was looking at a point on the wall thoughtfully.

            “I shouldn’t’ve mentioned it,” Eren said.

            “Why not?”

            “It’s not fair. You should’ve been there with us.”

            “So tell me about it. It’ll feel like I was there, then.”

            It was difficult to be really disappointed after that. Maybe being just Eren, and Armin being just Armin, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world; maybe this was something he could get used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry sorry that this is so short, and so late...wanted to have this ready to go like two months ago... The tectonic-style pacing is really not deliberate. I want so badly to finish this, but I've been having a hard time lately outside of writing, so it's taking some time (I WILL finish it though. It's just a matter of getting through the middle. The end's all sorted). I'll respond to comments when I can--I read and appreciate every one. Thank you to anyone who's still reading <3


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